The Buckeyes knew that a win on Saturday would be more than enough to secure a spot in the College Football Playoff this season after missing it the past two years as Big Ten Champion. There were not bad losses on this schedule, there were no losses whatsoever.

No, it really was going to come down to a matter of Ohio State really being the No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the playoff (there are a few outliers roaming around that think Clemson should have been higher despite playing a schedule made up of eight or nine games against Maryland). That does not take anything away from the defending champs being a formidable foe, just saying that there is a reason why despite being on a long winning streak and having a huge margin of victory, they never got much traction from the CFP committee.

No, this really comes down to Ohio State and LSU for that top spot and while we have weeks to debate if they got it right, that does not mean we can't look at it in deeper detail here in the 3-2-1.

Sure, we are not going to change any minds. Everyone already had their mind made up before the rankings came out and we feel that there are very few people that were truly undecided or indifferent about this one as both Ohio State and LSU held the No. 1 spot at some point of the process and the Buckeyes were in the top spot only to see it slip away at the 11th hour.

We will talk that, the rapid ascent of the Ohio State men's basketball team and much more in the latest 3-2-1 presented by our friends at Hague Water Conditioning.

1 - Be transparent or not

Let's start this off by saying that the weekly CFP rankings show is dumb and not doing anyone any favors.

That is not the fault of the hosts, they see the results at the same time that we do. We get the results, we get about five minutes with the selection chairperson on the television show with some very basic and non-informative answers and then the media gets about 30 minutes on a teleconference with the chairperson where the same questions are asked in various ways and the same non-informative answers are thrown out there once again.

We really don't know what is going on in that room in Grapevine (Texas). There is no such thing as a College Football Playoff expert, no matter how many extra interviews are granted to that person, mock selections are done with members of the media. It is just a title. I should just start calling myself the King of Siam to see if it sticks or not.

In order to get the playoff that most everyone wanted in the worst way, we gave up any sort of transparency of a system. Sure, the BCS created some odd results at times and was very restrictive when it came down to just allowing the top-two teams to play for the title. But it was all laid out in front of us. You could take the data points, put them in a spreadsheet and viola, you had the results and did not need any show, conference call or carrier pigeon to tell you otherwise.

No, we have a clandestine group that moves in secrecy, even with a set of rules laid out by the College Football Playoff organization. We don't know how those rules are interpreted from season-to-season, week-to-week or member-to-member.

What seems to be important one week is not important the next week. How many times do we hear people say, "We think we know what is important to this committee, this season" only to be proven wrong.

And even when we think we have a couple of the members of the committee figured out, they rotate off the assignment as their two-year commitment comes to an end.

We are not sure what we have the biggest problem with in the final week of the rankings process. The declaration that the committee looked at UGA for the No. 4 spot in the playoff along with Oklahoma, the fact that the committee gave any real praise to the LSU defense for playing a depleted UGA team and won relatively easily against a team that had lost its offensive pulse due to a rash of injuries that would decimate most teams before taking the field or just the plain inconsistencies of what they said from week-to-week about how dominant a team has been throughout or that special consideration would be in place about having to play a team a second time and what that kind of win or loss would mean in the big picture.

Look, we are not going to explain away that LSU had the more impressive win on the scoreboard in the final week. Sure, UGA would have never been our No. 4 team but the Dawgs still would have been higher than the Badgers going into this game. But not by a huge margin.

And yes, Ohio State did go into halftime down two touchdowns, looked very mortal on both sides of the ball. But the Buckeyes also then went for 27 points to end the game and held the Badgers to just six yards on the ground in the final 30 minutes of the game in doing so.

Are we to believe that the conference championship game undid everything that Ohio State had done in its three-game stretch that included Penn State, Michigan and Wisconsin for a second time? During that same stretch LSU played Arkansas (who had fired its coach), Texas A&M and Georgia. During that stretch the Buckeyes moved up from No. 2 to No. 1. But apparently according to a committee that does not have to show its work, two quarters of football for the Buckeyes where they were not sharp, where their quarterback was playing on a sprained MCL, where Ohio State was playing against a team that already had four quarters of experience of playing the Buckeyes just six weeks prior, gave it all away. Or was LSU just that impressive against a team that had not broken the 30-point plateau against an SEC foe since playing Tennessee the first week of October. And once you take out guys like Lawrence Cager, Dominick Blaylock and George Pickens at receiver, you barely go to D'Andre Swift due to his own medical issues and even have a Jake Fromm that had not seen like himself... and then you trumpet "LSU's great defensive effort"? We call Shenanigans on that.

We shouldn't be concerned with expanding the playoff to six, eight or 16 teams. While we may have the right four teams in the playoff, there are still some major problems in how this whole things works.

LSU has a tremendous team that starts with a great passing offense, a sneaky good rushing offense and a handful of top-end defensive players. But did they do enough in that final week to flip the rankings?

Probably not. But at the end of the day we will never know really what the committee was thinking or looking for.

With that being said, just beat Clemson.

2 - Men's basketball team continues to impress

Raise your hand if you thought the Buckeyes would be the nation's No. 3 team in the AP in early-December. How about No. 1 in KenPom rankings. Keep them up there.

We certainly did not see that. We felt that Ohio State might be pretty good this year, certainly compete for a double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament (signifying being a top-four team in the league).

The 2019-20 North Carolina TarHeels may not be as good as many of the previous teams to call Chapel Hill (N.C.) home, but what the Buckeyes did to the current team was almost obscene. After spotting the Heels an early lead in the first couple of minutes, the Buckeyes flexed their muscles and then weathered the storm as UNC cut the game back down to three-points at the U-16 timeout in the 2nd half, only for the Buckeyes to then go on a 35-13 run to end the game and win 74-49.

Then Ohio State would host Penn State on the day of the B1G Championship Football Game, sparse crowd, not a lot of buzz with football dominating the headlines and then go on to score 106 on a team that many people felt was a trendy upset pick after the Buckeyes had come off of the big win just a few nights before.

There is a lot of basketball left to be played and nobody is calling for Ohio State to run the table. Three of the next four games include a road game at Minnesota, the first road game of the conference schedule as well as neutral site games against Kentucky and West Virginia.

But this team was supposed to get tripped up by Villanova or North Carolina or even Penn State. The Buckeyes have gone on to win those three games by an average margin of 27-plus points.

There will be some down moments, it is just how a 30-plus game season works, but hang on folks, this team is going to be a lot of fun to watch. Shame is the season will be more than halfway over before most football fans really are aware of what is going on.

3 - Running backs need not apply

Four finalists, no running backs for the Heisman Trophy. Congrats to Justin Fields and Chase Young and well as Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts.

Yes, it would have been tough for Ohio State to get three players out of four or five to be finalists for the Heisman. For all the talk of splitting the vote between two players, just imagine what three must have been like.

This goes deeper than just JK Dobbins for Ohio State however, throw in Jonathan Taylor and Chuba Hubbard and you see that the Heisman is truly not a running back award.

With apologies to any other running backs out there nationally, these three backs have put up ridiculous numbers this season with both Hubbard and Taylor north of 1,900 yards and Dobbins at 1,829 yards but his yards per carry outpaces the other two.

All three backs have at least 20 rushing touchdowns on the year. Throw in receiving touchdowns and Taylor has 25, Dobbins has 22 and Hubbard has 21 on the year.

Three running backs have won the Heisman since the turn of the century. Four won it in the 1990s alone.

It really has turned into a quarterback award. This year it will go to a quarterback with former Ohio State QB and current LSU quarterback Joe Burrow set to win it by a historic margin.

Just a shame that the award that is supposed to go to the most outstanding player in college football has really morphed into a quarterback award.

1 - Can the Buckeyes close in with final recruiting push?

The Buckeyes are already sitting at 25 commits for the class of 2020 and nobody is expecting this class to get a whole lot larger but there are a couple of key players still on the board as National Signing Day is almost here.

The biggest visit of the short-term is that of quarterback C.J. Stroud out of California.

The Buckeyes certainly want and feel that they need two quarterbacks in this class and already have Jack Miller in the fold. Getting Stroud to campus for this official visit would go a long way in landing the quarterback who intends on signing early when the window opens next week.

If he gets on campus, look for the Buckeyes to try and land that commitment with very little time to have to play defense based on when the dead period starts up again.

Ohio State certainly has a lot of other schools to fend off, many with no quarterback in the fold, whereas Ohio State is looking to add a second.

You have to juggle that delicate balance of telling everyone that there is that opportunity to compete for the position. With one more year of Justin Fields in 2020, the position will be pretty wide open come 2021 with Miller, Kyle McCord and potentially Stroud all in the mix.

There are some other spots that the Buckeyes would like to address with running back and maybe another defensive lineman still on the board, but the question really comes down to will the Buckeyes be able to close the deal and secure the pledge from Stroud and have him join the 2020 class?

2 - How is Justin Fields doing?

We don't have an answer for this one but it is a question on the minds of every Ohio State fan. Justin Fields said after the B1G Champ Game that he was mostly fine for the game after playing in three highly stressful games with a bum MCL. He now will have a couple of weeks to stay off of it in a football-sense.

But how will he be come December 28th when the Buckeyes have to face off with the defending national champions? None of us really know, not even Justin Fields.

The good news is that this first-year starter has 13 starts under his belt, he is not a first-year starter any longer, he is a seasoned veteran. He has just about as many starts as Dwayne Haskins had during his whole collegiate career.

Again, we don't really have any answer to this, but it is a question we will hear on an hourly basis from now until the official end of the season.

Here's to hoping that moment won't be until the Buckeyes are hoisting the CFP Championship Trophy.

Okay, this is not a 'this week' prediction but I just wanted to get out ahead of things. I have already started to see the way-too-early predictions starting to come out and it appears that Clemson is the trendy pick and why not? They are the defending national champions, they are the current betting favorite and Ohio State is 0-3 lifetime against the Tigers.

I just don't expect things to change as we get closer to the game. That does not mean I am making my pick right now, but just based on what the national narrative is, people are convinced that the team that took only a minor punch from a mediocre UNC team will be able to step up in weight after fighting a schedule of weakling ACC teams and be able to turn it on against Ohio State.

Honestly, this is going to be a good thing with Ohio State coming in as an underdog. Sure, Urban Meyer and his record as an underdog at Ohio State is not in play, but it is a chance for Ryan Day to set his own legacy and exorcise some demons that nobody wants to look at and get a crack at a national championship in year one.

Editors Note: 3-2-1 will run on Thursday next week instead of its usual Wednesday slot due to National Signing Day. We don't want this piece to get lost in the recruiting coverage. This is just a one-week move and the piece will return to its normal slot the following week.