COLUMBUS, Ohio - I will be the first person to admit that I had it all wrong to start the season when it came to making some predictions about the Buckeyes. Yes, I had Ohio State finishing the season 11-1, with that one loss coming to Nebraska.

I saw the folly of my ways after the Buckeyes demolished Cincinnati however and started singing a different tune.

It is too soon to tell if Ohio State will be able to get through the regular season unscathed for the first time since 2012, with seven games to go including road trips to Northwestern, Rutgers and Michigan all still on the table.

But as for that pick of the Huskers being the team to knock off the Buckeyes? I couldn't have been more wrong and I am here to take my medicine.

I don't think that the Huskers are a bad team, I just feel that the Buckeyes are a really good team. Adrian Martinez threw three interceptions in the game but they just did not happen in a vacuum, it took some big plays to make those happen from the pass rush to the actual interception of the ball.

Ohio State's 48 points in the 2019 game were impressive but the Buckeyes have scored more in three of the last four games against Nebraska. But I doubt anyone else this year will approach 48 points scored on the Huskers outside of a multi-overtime game that extends the action well beyond 60 minutes.

Huskers head coach Scott Frost admitted on Monday that he voted the Buckeyes No. 1 in the coaches poll, and we don't feel that he is way off based on what the Buckeyes were able to do on the road for a real first 'road test' after the win at Indiana saw almost as many Ohio State fans in the building as Hoosiers fans.

Michigan State, Wisconsin, Penn State and Michigan all have reasons to believe that they will be the team to knock off the Buckeyes this year. Rutgers? Well, they are just happy to be playing ball. That probably means that either a road game at Northwestern or the home game against Maryland, the same Maryland team that got run over by Penn State, will probably be that 'flat' game that Ohio State needs to be on guard for.

Or this team might really be as special as they have appeared through 20 quarters of football.

There is a lot of football left to be played between now and December and a lot of debate to be had on who should be atop the rankings (and we will talk about that more in a few seconds). One thing that cannot be denied is that nobody is playing quite as well as the Buckeyes.

And I was wrong about the Nebraska game in the preseason.

I'm sorry.

It won't happen again.

1 - Beating a team by too much "devalues" your win in the eyes of some

Before: Cincinnati is going to be sneaky good and the Buckeyes better be ready for them, a team that won double-digit games last season and full of Ohio kids that did not get recruited by Ohio State.

Ohio State 42 Cincinnati 0

After: They just aren't the same team that they were last year and they have taken a big step in the wrong direction. They are okay to compete in the AAC but would have lost to most teams in the Power Five.

Before: Indiana is a first true road test for Ohio State and the Hoosiers are due to surprise the Buckeyes. Justin Fields has never started a road game during his collegiate career and the Buckeyes have only been getting fat on teams coming to their building.

Ohio State 51 Indiana 10

After: It was Indiana, don't get all excited. There were more Ohio State fans there than Indiana fans. They had to go without Michael Penix. Wait until they play someone for real on the road.

Before: This is going to be it, Nebraska is going to upend the Buckeyes. Look at 2018, that was a five-point game and they don't have a lot of the key pieces from that year. Ryan Day is a first-year head coach and Scott Frost is a genius. The Huskers have too much speed on offense and that defense is a lot better. Even if Nebraska does not beat Ohio State outright, it will be close and bring these Buckeyes back to Earth.

Ohio State 48 Nebraska 7

After: Did you see that offensive line? Adrian Martinez is vastly overrated and some nagging injuries really kept some of Nebraska's playmakers in check. Just wait until they play a team with a real defense like Michigan State.

Starting to see a trend here?

Would it have been better, strangely enough, if Ohio State would have just won some of these games by two or three scores instead of blowing them out? The argument could certainly be made that Ohio State has taken some teams that people had some hopes for, made them look really bad and instead of Ohio State looking really good in their efforts, detractors have only used this as an opportunity to punch holes in Ohio State's foes and not give the Buckeyes any credit.

Ohio State fans have been taking this well.

Or not.

I liken this to that ridiculous practice of chanting 'Overrated' after beating a team that is better than your own. It only devalues what your team did by saying that the other team was not all that good in the first place.

Shouldn't you be trumpeting how your team went out there and shocked the world rather than screaming that the other team was not all that good to begin with?

UC, IU and Nebraska were not going to win their conferences, let's just get that out there. But those three teams have a combined record of 9-5 on the year, and three of those losses were against Ohio State. The same Ohio State team that outscored them by a combined margin of 141-17.

Up next is Michigan State. I can already hear it...

After: How could anyone expect a team that has scored an average of 10.5 points against Ohio State in the last four games come in and pull off any sort of upset. Brian Lewerke is who we thought he was. Just you wait until Wisconsin when the Buckeyes finally play somebody.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

2- It just means more

Alabama, UGA and LSU are all really good teams, let's get that out there right now. Auburn has a really good win but it remains to be seen how good they really are. Florida may be undefeated, but let's calm down here.

Fortunately Florida and Auburn play each other this weekend and the rational people out there will be forced to drop one of them from the ranks of the elite.

LSU plays against Utah State, UGA travels to Knoxville (Tenn.) to play a pretty awful Tennessee team and Bama is in an open week.

The SEC is sitting with five teams in the top-10 of the AP poll, three in the top-five.

It may be a little early, only in the first few days of October to start thumping the drum of the ponzi scheme that the SEC is, but let's just get ready for it. The steps are simple.

* Have your member teams over-ranked in the polls.

* Lose league game(s) along the way and trumpet what a meat-grinder the league is. Fall about half the spots that teams from the other four Power Five leagues would drop.

* Play eight league games instead of nine, be sure to schedule at least one FCS opponent, if not more.

* Have league network that is in cahoots with ESPN keep narrative going day-in and day-out about how strong the league is and label "criticism" as "jealousy".

* Air world's most annoying commercial about how the SEC just "means more".

* Start crying now about wanting to get three teams in the CFP so you can throttle back to two.

* Profit.

Look, I could start going on and on about how Clemson is not going to play anyone and how dumb of a decision that Mack Brown made in the UNC/Clemson game last weekend but that is not going to get us anywhere. Nobody in their right mind would put two ACC teams in the CFP.

But you better believe that there are people already working to figure out how to get three SEC teams into the CFP.

There are national writers who have four SEC teams at the top of their rankings right now. Granted, that is a snapshot of the moment, but if they are going to look past teams like Ohio State, Clemson and Oklahoma right now to put four teams atop their rankings, how are we supposed to accept that they are being genuine in their views.

This is not a plea to start campaigning for Ohio State at this point of the season with seven league games to go as well as a conference championship game.

This is a plea to stop the madness of the SEC hype machine that has invaded the national sports media.

It is just crazy.

Crazy like a fox.

Speaking of like a fox, things will not change until FOX is able to pull more market share away from "those people in Bristol".

Buckle up, if you don't watch carefully it will be the SECFP before you know it.

3 - Penn State seems to be the threat in the East

Before the season started the belief (at least of the FPI and some other silly metrics) were that Michigan would be the team to beat in the Big Ten East and likely the best chance that the conference had at getting into the CFP.

This is not the time to talk how about stupid the computers are or the tired narrative each year that this will be the year that somebody pushes Ohio State off the pillar and forces them to spend years building back momentum.

While the Wolverines may be 3-1 on the year, it appears that many have come to their senses and see that not all is well in Ann Arbor (Mich.) and that the Wolverines have a very flawed team.

They still have a lot of talent and are a threat to win each week based on a few of their star players. But this week the Wolverines host the Iowa Hawkeyes and a loss in this game would be fatal as a second league loss. Plus the Wolverines have not really started their round-robin of the Big Ten East with Penn State, Michigan State and Ohio State all in the offing.

It is unlikely that Michigan is able to run the table in the conference and still has a non-conference game against Notre Dame to contend with as well.

With apologies to the other teams in the B1G East (Michigan State, Maryland et al) the biggest challenge to the Buckeyes on this side of the conference will be Penn State. That is a very different tune than what everyone was singing to start the season as Penn State had a lot of key players to return.

While Ohio State has drawn the eyes through the first month of the season, Penn State has run through its first four games in impressive fashion. Sure, their schedule has not really been all that great either but the Nittany Lions did go into Maryland and just flat-out annihilated the Terps on a Friday night. Sure, it could have been just one good game for PSU and one bad game for Maryland, but it better be enough to make everyone take notice.

Just like everyone else in the league with nine conference games to contend with, Penn State will have its hands full with games at Iowa, vs. Michigan, at Michigan State and at Ohio State this season.

And games against Idaho, Buffalo and Pittsburgh (all at home) don't fill in the rest of the blanks as we are trying to extrapolate four games across an entire season.

But this is the team that Ohio State fans need to keep an eye on, maybe even more than Wisconsin, a team that the Buckeyes could face twice if everything goes according to plan.

1 - Can the Buckeyes hold the Spartans to fewer than 20 points?

As I mentioned earlier, the Buckeyes have done a really good job at keeping the Spartans off the scoreboard over the last four meetings. But you could also say that the Spartans have done just as good of a job keeping themselves off the scoreboard during that same timeframe.

In the last four games the Spartans have gone for six, three, 16 and 17 points. The Buckeyes have not exactly hammered them during that stretch, going 3-1 in final outcomes but only really going off in 2017 for 48 points in a rout the week following Ohio State's loss at Iowa.

It is no secret that Michigan State really was Urban Meyer's kryptonite in the Big Ten, handing Ohio State two of the nine losses that were under Meyer's watch. Ohio State also lost the one chance that Luke Fickell had at the Spartans in 2011 in a 10-7 decision in Columbus.

Jim Tressel never lost to the Spartans, with Ohio State's last loss to MSU prior to the 2011 is occurring under John Cooper's watch in 1999.

The oddsmakers/bettors seem to really like Ohio State early in the week with the line jumping from 17 to more than 20 points within 24 hours of the line being released. If Michigan State is able to get to 20 points, that means that people are expecting the Buckeyes to put up somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-plus points against one of the nation's top defenses.That may not be an impossible task as we have stayed time and time again that we are dealing with such a small sample size of games that we really don't know just how good some units are yet and will have a better idea after a few marquee games.

If the Buckeyes were able to hold the Nebraska offense to just seven points, seven late points at that... it would seem as if Ohio State might have a pretty good shot at keeping the Spartans in check, much in the same way that Arizona State was able to hold MSU to just seven points mid-September.

2- Will the real Brian Lewerke please stand up?

Okay, we are doing both questions about the Michigan State offense...

The Michigan State quarterback has two games of passing for 300 or more yards and just missed a third one by nine yards against Arizona State, despite the team only putting up seven points in a controversial ending.

Lewerke is sitting with 10 touchdowns against only one pick this year and is close to a 60-percent completion percentage.

The MSU quarterback does not have 300 total passing yards against Ohio State between two starts versus the Buckeyes. In fact his numbers between games in 2017 and 2018 are 29-64 (.453) passing for 259 yards with zero touchdowns and three interceptions.

Has he turned the corner this year or do the Buckeyes just have the upper-hand with him?

We will touch upon this more later this week in our Tale of the Tape.

With great experts and insiders like Marc Givler, Alex Gleitman and NevadaBuck, I rarely talk about recruiting all that much in stories and columns but with this story running on Wednesdays, I have the chance to really get out in front of this one.

The Buckeyes have not had a commitment for the class of 2020 since Kourt Williams committed in late July as part of a seven-player July run on commitments to get the Ohio State class up to 22 players and cemented in the top-five classes.

Since then the Buckeyes have seen a couple of players who were locks up until the 11th hour opt to go elsewhere and while the class of 2021 has seen movement as well as Chris Holtmann's basketball program, the class of 2020 has been shutout.

Until now.

A Friday decision is looking quite promising for the Buckeyes. Granted, Bijan Robinson and Jaylan Knighton were both penciled into this class until the last second.

This one will go Ohio State's way.

It's about time that the Buckeyes caught a break.