Should Ohio State really be a 17-point favorite over Georgia?

That’s a question we ask on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays after early bowl projections released by The Action Network earlier this week listed Ohio State as a 17-point favorite for a hypothetical College Football Playoff semifinal game over Georgia, as well as a 2-point favorite in a hypothetical national championship game against Alabama.

We’re buying that the Buckeyes are one of the top two frontrunners to make the national championship game this year, but we’re not so sure about them being favored by three scores over Georgia or being favored at all against Alabama. We discuss all of that (beginning at 8:54) and make our early predictions for which teams will make the College Football Playoff, including a Pac-12 team that could crash the party for the first time.

Another article that caught our attention this week was a re-ranking of college football’s 2018 recruiting classes by The Athletic, which re-ranked Ohio State’s 2018 class 12th, 10 spots lower than its original composite ranking of second. We take a look (starting at 21:55) at how the class has fallen short of expectations so far and how players like Josh Proctor, Cameron Brown and Taron Vincent could still at least partially rewrite the narrative of that class.

Although we recorded before Tuesday night’s win over Minnesota, we also talk about the latest developments surrounding Ohio State basketball (32:35), including E.J. Liddell’s player of the year campaign and the commitment of 2023 big man Austin Parks.

At the 50:22 mark of the show, Dan shares a few things he learned from interviews with Cade Stover and four other Ohio State football players last week.

Finally (54:33), we give some love to Ohio State’s other sports teams, as there are currently 15 Buckeye teams ranked in the top 25 in their respective sports, led by the No. 1-ranked men’s tennis team, who will compete for an indoor national championship this weekend.