Just about nobody saw it coming: 31-0 Clemson was a result that was seemingly barely on the table at all.
The boxplot of performance volatility I posted in the advanced stats preview doesn’t even really capture the offensive performance we saw on New Year’s Eve — Ohio State’s worst bowl loss since 1920 and Urban Meyer’s largest margin of defeat ever as a head coach. In many ways it felt similar to the 2006/7 41-14 National Championship loss to Meyer’s Gators (I’d argue that was worse, but that’s another story) in terms of embarrassment on a national stage.