COLUMBUS, Ohio – Many Ohio State fans debated if they were going to watch the College Football Playoff championship game between Clemson and LSU earlier this week, the sting of the Fiesta Bowl loss still too much to bear for many Buckeyes fans.

At the end of the day, we figure more fans than not did sit down and watch the game and just wonder what could have been if things would have worked out a little bit differently and how Ohio State would have fared against LSU in New Orleans.

“It would have been fun to play them,” head coach Ryan Day said when asked about a hypothetical matchup with LSU. “That's why you play the game. Certainly wished we had the opportunity to play them.”

Instead the Buckeyes were relegated to watching it on TV, along with 128 Division I-FBS programs. An even tougher task as Ohio State was ‘right there’ and had plenty of opportunities to punch the ticket to the final game.

“That was hard to watch,” Day added. “I'm not going to lie. It was very difficult.”

While fans had a chance to opt out from watching the game, that was not an option for anyone affiliated with the team as it was required viewing.

“I told the team and the coaches that I wanted everybody to watch that game, as hard as it was going to be from beginning to end and then think about the things -- how bad do they want to get back into that game next year, or back into that situation and get to that game,” Day said. “Then what are they willing to do and sacrifice to get back there. That's what I was thinking when I was watching that game.”

The work and sacrifice are already taking place as the Buckeyes are in winter conditioning, putting in the work that rarely is talked about outside of the walls of the WHAC.

We will get to talk to Mickey Marotti next week and get a glimpse into how offseason training is going for this team.

Former Ohio State quarterback Joe Burrow had himself one heck of a season with a national championship, Heisman Trophy and on Friday a trip to the White House to celebrate the championship season.

Ohio State fans would have been in a unique position if an Ohio State versus LSU matchup would have happened with a quarterback that they had been cheering for from a distance facing off against their favorite team.

Nobody would have expected any Ohio State fans to pull for anyone other than Ohio State, but it still would have been an interesting dilemma, a welcome one.

Plenty of Ohio State players went to social media to congratulate their former teammate at each step of the journey through the award ceremony and after the final game.

Burrow was a popular player in the Ohio State locker room and while he will go down as an LSU legend, Ohio State players and fans know that he spent three good years with the Buckeyes and will always have a tie into the Ohio State program, even if he was not able to break out of the logjam of a historic quarterback room.

“We talked to Joe obviously several times on the award circuit and stayed in touch with Joe, and then obviously talked to him after the game and just congratulated him and how happy we were for him,” Day said. “It was great to see the way he played, and just the way he handled himself all year was awesome.”

Of course there are going to be the people who play the “what if” game here as well. Obviously if Burrow would have gotten the job, it would have likely been Dwayne Haskins who would have been on the move. And what does that mean for Justin Fields when he was looking to transfer from UGA to a new destination?

Things all work out for a reason and it is a fun debate, but the Buckeyes have won a lot of games since that pivotal moment in time where they had to pick a quarterback between Burrow and Haskins and things have progressed from there.

“Nothing but the utmost respect for Joe and happy the way things played out,” Day added. “It's hard to see somebody who leaves the program, graduates and everything, go on to do something like that. But I think everybody understands you have to make tough decisions. And we're obviously happy with the decisions we made. But at the same time it's great to see Joe go on and play so well.”

With apologies to the scandal plaguing Major League Baseball at the moment with electronic sign stealing and alleged use of wearable devices for signaling pitches, one of the biggest controversies stuck in the mind of sports fans is the ‘Targeting Rule’.

Ohio State fell victim to it in the Fiesta Bowl and Clemson was not spared in the championship game when it lost a starting linebacker.

There are few people who believe that football should do away with the move to change the mechanics of tackling in regard to leading with the head and violent hits.

It was a shocking change when the NCAA decided to install a rule that not only assessed a 15-yard penalty but also resulted in the ejection of the player at the very moment the foul was awarded.

There was a change made to the rule after the first year that brought the replay booth into the equation in a more prominent manner, making it so the booth would have to confirm every call of targeting, and of course allowing the booth to add targeting where it may have been missed by the on-field officials.

The rule itself may need to be reworked again as the game is so quick and we are dealing with split-second decisions that have a major impact. There has been talk of going to a two-tier system of the rule, much like where the facemask penalty used to be with a five and 15-yard variety. But that does not seem to have much traction as officials do not want to be in the ‘intent’ game of trying to determine what the tackler had in mind with the hit.

The thing that really has drawn the ire of many is the ejection, an ejection that can lead to a first-half suspension for the player if the penalty occurs in the second half of a game.

This is not a matter of trying to replay what happened on the hit between Shaun Wade and Trevor Lawrence in the Fiesta Bowl, because targeting shows up multiple times a week and while the stakes may not be as high in some of the games as it was on December 28th, it still is a harsh penalty for a play that often ends up being a matter of ‘wrong place, wrong time’ more than the headhunting that we saw a generation ago in the sport.

Ryan Day was asked about targeting this week and while he did not want to get into that many specifics, it appears that you can put him in the column of those looking for some reform to the rule.

“I was at the AFCA head coaches meeting (Tuesday),” Day said. “There was some talk about that and trying to make some adjustments. I'll let Todd Berry and those guys talk about some of the things. But I do think that some of those things should be looked at.”

That does not mean that Day or any of the members of the AFCA feel that there is not a need for player safety or even a targeting rule in some iteration, but the current system may not be the best way of handling things.

“It's certainly a difficult thing at times to officiate, as we all know,” Day said. “It's in there for the right reasons. But there is some gray area there that's sometimes hard. I totally get that.”

Wade will be good to go in Ohio State’s opener against Bowling Green with the penalty occurring in the first half and not requiring any carryover penalty into the next game.