COLUMBUS, Ohio – As everyone anxiously awaits the Big Ten to release the schedule for the (hopeful) upcoming season, it is business as usual at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.

Well, not exactly.

We know that life today is anything but normal but what we can say is that the Buckeyes have a focused team, even in a day and age where it is hard to focus with all of the happenings going on in the world.

One thing does not change when you are a member of the Ohio State football team.

The desire to beat Michigan.

Also known as “That team up north”.

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With the decision to move to an all-conference schedule (presumably a 10-game schedule) it does create a lot of possibilities when it comes to scheduling.

There was talk of putting the divisional games at the start of the season, in order to give teams a chance to get divisional games out of the way, in case of a major disruption.

There was talk of playing them in the middle of the season.

There was even some loose chatter about going division-less, just having the top two teams meet in Indianapolis for the conference crown, if possible.

This all means that there is a real chance that the Buckeyes could meet their traditional rival on a non-traditional date with this game being played in late-November since 1933 when the two teams played in October, strangely enough in the third game of the season (Ohio State dropped that game 13-0 in Ann Arbor, its only loss of the season but the Buckeyes still finished 3rd in the conference).

We had the chance to talk to several of the newly named Ohio State football captains earlier on Tuesday to get their thoughts about playing the Wolverines on a non-traditional Saturday and the message was loud and clear, just beat “TTUN”, regardless of when.

“To be honest, I really don’t care when we play the team up north,” quarterback Justin Fields said. “I just want to play them and really just beat the brakes off of them., for real. That’s all I have to say.”

Brakes have been beaten as Ohio State has scored a combined 118 points over the last two meetings and have averaged more than 36 points per game over the past eight and a margin of victory of more than two touchdowns over that same period.

It has been good to be a Buckeye during this century in the series as Ohio State has held a comfortable lead and this current crew of Ohio State players wants to continue that, regardless of what the calendar says.

“It really doesn’t matter to me when we play,” offensive guard Wyatt Davis said. “The tradition of that game is really important to us, but it doesn’t matter. If it is the first game on the schedule, then so be it. We are going to beat the brakes off of them.”

A lot of arguments can be made as to when the game ‘should’ be played. With Rutgers and Northwestern both on ‘pauses’ with positive tests and Illinois dealing with its own run of positive cases of COVID-19, an earlier date makes sense.

Major League Baseball has seen the Marlins, Phillies and Cardinals among teams that have had to postpone games due to outbreaks and some have questioned if the “non-bubble” system is working. It would be difficult to put all 14 teams of the B1G in bubbles and away from the rest of the university population.

“With the uncertainty of the season right now I am more concerned about playing them at all in general. I think we will play them, regardless of where they are on the schedule, I am less concerned with it now, given the circumstances.” offensive center Josh Myers said.

If you ask Ohio State’s players, they might be up for just playing all 10 games against Michigan and trying to even up the all-time series once and for all.

But there is something to be said for tradition as well, and this game has plenty of tradition attached to it.

“With the tradition of the game I would love for it to be the last game of the season, but I would also love to have a normal college football schedule,” Myers added. “I would love to play at Oregon. So, there are a lot of things that are different about this year. Just letting that go for now, accepting the situation as it is and being ready to play any day.”

For a fifth-year player like Jonathon Cooper who grew up in the shadow of Ohio Stadium, just bring it, regardless of when.

“The date does not matter, it is just the team up north, as long as we get to play them,” Cooper said.