This Saturday, Northwestern meets Ohio State in Indianapolis as a necessary blood sacrifice so that the Buckeyes get to go to the Playoff and Big Ten officials can go light up some cigars and congratulate themselves for making the decision that teams should play through a pandemic in order to get television money and reflect on how they fought through the adversity that came from teams becoming fetid Covid swamps and the many arduous phone calls they had to make.
Now, after building an eight-game schedule with no slack, allowing Kirk Herbstreit to accuse Michigan of not playing Ohio State during a team-wide outbreak as some sort of ridiculous rivalry hi-jink on the order of stealing the Brutus head and firing it out of a bulbous air cannon, and convening an very silly emergency Ohio State Needs to Make the Playoff Meeting, all that stands in the way of their machinations resulting in that precious playoff berth is this:
Not only would a Northwestern victory be satisfying for winning the conference and vanquishing Big Bad Ohio State, it would also serve as a monkey wrench that would destroy the precarious house of cards constructed by the Playofff Committee to get all of their favorite teams in.