Imagine treating Ohio State like any other game on the schedule.
It would be a mystifying strategy for coaches, the only motivational speakers on the circuit who wear whistles around their necks. Consider that for most of their professional lives - during the season, during the offseason, as public figures, as football nerds - they're forced to manufacture synthetic adrenalin and inspiration that moves giant teenagers or entitled fans to care more.
When the schedule gifts you the natural stuff, you don't just take it. You grab it, inhale it and pass it around the locker room and campus until kickoff, because you're going to need every dose of it to produce the story you'll be telling unborn grandchildren about in a few decades.