ARLINGTON, Texas – A distance from the stage where confetti would soon swirl, where Ohio State head coach Ryan Day would hoist the Cotton Bowl trophy and quarterback Will Howard and edge rusher Jack Sawyer on their respective sides of the ball would be named MVPs, a Buckeyes communications officer pressed a football into the crook of his arm around the 9-yard line. He’d had it in his hand for quite some time, at least since the moment the final buzzer sounded, but perhaps for a while longer, around the 2:13 mark of the fourth quarter when Sawyer took it from Texans quarterback Quinn Ewers and galloped 83 yards down the sideline for an unforgettable scoop-and-score that led his team to the national championship game. Between those two snapshots was a moment when Sawyer, a revered senior and team captain, entrusted the memento with very specific instructions to Jerry Emig, the program’s longtime sports information director.

“Jack gave it to me,” Emig remembers, “and he said, ‘Jerry, that’s the ball I scored with. Keep him. Don’t give him away.”

So Emig drove the ball through an on-field celebration that stretched from one side of AT&T Stadium to the other, from the formal presentation near the same end zone where Sawyer cemented a 28-14 victory over Texas, to the game by “Carmen Ohio.” from the Buckeyes’ marching band, just feet from where Ewers’ crippling fumble occurred. Emig still had the ball in his hands more than 20 minutes later when Ohio State’s locker room opened to the media, and he repeated the origin story one or two more times. Whether it ultimately ends up back with Sawyer, who will play the final game of his college career against Notre Dame on Jan. 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, or whether he will be prominently displayed on a trophy case at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center remains to be seen seen. But his place in program history is undisputed.

And what a whirlwind these last six weeks have been for Sawyer, one of the most passionate players on the Buckeyes’ roster, who suffered an emotional breakdown after their fourth straight loss to Michigan, spread across three appearances in three different locations at Ohio Stadium, all of them tainted with pepper spray caused by a failed melee. There was a verbal confrontation with Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham, who angered Sawyer by calling Ohio State a derogatory term for the female anatomy. Sawyer responded by reminding Graham that the Wolverines would not be playing in the College Football Playoff this year. There was the theft of a Michigan flag, which for the second time in three years Sawyer ripped from the pole his opponents wanted to set up at midfield. Sawyer caught the corn and blue bunting in his right hand before throwing them onto the lawn in disgust. And then there was the short-range shouting at tight ends coach Keenan Bailey, whose shoulders Sawyer gripped in frustration while Day watched in silence from a few feet away. “You won’t plant a flag on our field again, brother!” Sawyer yelled in Bailey’s face, his voice breaking more than once. “F— that’s—, man. F— these guys. Put a flag on our field? F— you!”

The rawness that exuded from Sawyer on that freezing November afternoon reflected both his personal disgust as an Ohio native forced to endure a career-long loss to The Team Up North and the unshakable reminder that his historic The 2021 recruiting class continued to fall short of all expectations and the goal it wanted to achieve. Sawyer and his classmates, many of whom he convinced to bypass the NFL Draft to finally right their wrongs, will leave Ohio State with zero wins over Michigan and zero Big Ten titles. These blemishes cannot be erased. That’s why, going into the postseason, the Buckeyes were aware that anything less than winning the national championship would be viewed as a complete failure — and might even cost Day his job.

The message spread from player to player in a star-studded senior class that finished second in the national rankings behind Alabama, a group filled with seven five-star prospects – two of whom were quarterbacks – and 14 players ranked in the top 100 New arrivals counted as a whole. There was five-star edge rusher JT Tuimoloau, an acclaimed pass rusher who had one of the best individual performances in program history against Penn State two years ago but has rarely pressured quarterbacks with any consistency since. There was five-star wideout Emeka Egbuka, now the leading receiver in Ohio State history, but a player who told reporters earlier this week, “I have absolutely no hardware to show for it.” There was outspoken cornerback Denzel Burke, whose March quote calling this season “Natty or Bust” is still a talking point 10 months later, especially now that Ohio State is one game away results is removed. There was a backlog in TreVeyon Henderson, whose long list of injuries and sporadic difficulties running between the tackles warranted the inclusion of Ole Miss transfer Quinshon Judkins in the portal. And of course there was Sawyer, the first recruit to commit to Day on February 3, 2019, and a player whose physical gifts never quite matched his statistical production. They all went into the College Football Playoff with something to prove.

“That’s why we all decided to come to Ohio State,” said left tackle Donovan Jackson, another member of the 2021 recruiting class back to Ohio State.

A trip to the national title game came down to this: Ohio State led 21-14 entering the final period of the fourth quarter; Texas clawed its way toward the goal line with a 27-yard completion from Ewers to wideout Matthew Golden and two consecutive pass interference penalties against the Buckeyes. At that moment — 4:04 left and the ball on the 1-yard line in a goal-to-go situation — someone’s voice rang out over the field through the phone line in the Buckeyes’ dugout. “Boy, they hit that quick,” said the unnamed employee. To that, defensive coordinator Jim Knowles responded with a growling response that would prove astonishingly prophetic. “They haven’t scored yet,” Knowles replied.

From there, Knowles’ defense stuffed consecutive running plays to push the Longhorns back seven yards, after which passing became their only viable option. On third-and-goal, Sawyer burst into the backfield and pressured Ewers to rush a throw to freshman wideout Ryan Wingo, with the ball landing harmlessly incomplete. It was the umpteenth time that Sawyer came within a hair’s breadth of matching his former roommate, the former No. 1 recruit in the country, who spent four months with the Buckeyes as a true freshman in 2021 before transferring to Texas. On Friday night, Ewers repeatedly deftly flung the ball away, a millisecond or two before Sawyer could bring him down, and twice made desperate checkdowns on a drive that tied the game at 14-14 late in the third quarter. But Ewers’ luck would soon run out.

On a fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line, Sawyer ducked his shoulder under right tackle Cameron Williams’ pads and threw both arms toward Ewers as the quarterback looked for open space. He released the football and shoved Ewers to the ground with breathtaking fluidity, the fumble bouncing gently into his hands as it spun upward. Sawyer raged and rumbled into the end zone with a convoy of teammates chasing him from behind.

“It was surreal,” Sawyer said. “I felt like I was in quicksand. I was just trying to get to the end zone so quickly. I looked back and (thought), ‘Hopefully I had a blocker,’ because I knew there were some skilled guys right there, and I don’t have wheels like that. But man, it was just a special moment.

And one that will never be forgotten. From the stage where Sawyer and Howard addressed the crowd and Day was cheered by a fan base that had loathed him six weeks earlier, the cheers spread to the sideline behind Ohio State’s bench. There, players donned white championship T-shirts and black championship hats to pose for photos with fans in the field-level suites. They shouted back and forth with their loved ones in the nearby family area and signed autographs for fans who threw memorabilia their way. “Let’s f—— go, baby!” Sawyer’s sister Kyla yelled from her front row seat next to parents Michelle and Lyle Sawyer, who both frantically pointed at their son. If Sawyer hadn’t been clutching his trophy tightly in both hands – protecting it from the throngs of camera-wielding reporters watching his every move – he might have climbed into the stands to join them. The thought seemed to briefly cross his mind.

Instead, Sawyer left the field at AT&T Stadium through a tunnel above which a gentleman in a white Ohio State jersey contorted his body so that players could see the sign. “NATTY BOUND” was the name of the individual seam on the shoulder blades, where a name was traditionally found. And the fan shouted to anyone who would listen that he had purchased the item back in February. “Let’s go, Bucks!” he shouted as a TV reporter grabbed a B-roll of his clothing.

The party that awaited Sawyer in the locker room was even bigger as one teammate after another congratulated him on his performance for the ages. One by one they clapped his shoulder pads, sang his praises, and pulled him in for a hug. Because six weeks after Sawyer hit emotional rock bottom, his rebirth had brought Ohio State to the precipice of a national title.

“You’re the No. 1 Buckeye of all time,” Egbuka said as Sawyer walked past his locker. “You are Captain Buckeye.”

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball with a focus on the Big Ten for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @Michael_Cohen13.

(Want great stories delivered straight to your inbox? Create your FOX Sports account or log in, follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized daily newsletter.)

---

---