The Buckeyes punched their ticket to the College Football Playoffs after defeating Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship Game and just learned their fate moments ago on the big reveal show. Up next will be the Clemson Tigers in the Sugar Bowl.

This will be the fourth time that Ohio State has been part of the College Football Playoff and the Buckeyes would love to get back to their first-year ways when they won it all in 2014 as the team ran through Alabama and then Oregon en route to winning the first ever College Football Playoff National Championship.

It will be a short run-up to this big game with less than two weeks to prepare as opposed to nearly a month in previous years. But 2020 is 2020 and that is how it needs to be as conferences needed to spread schedules out or start late in order to get a season in.

We will have plenty of time to really break things down in the two weeks leading up to this game, but here as the announcement is fresh, let’s take a quick glance at this huge match-up for Ryan Day’s Buckeyes.

This has not been good, as Ohio State is 0-4 against the Clemson Tigers and each one of them are remembered for one reason or another. We will get into the most recent game in a moment but the all of these games have been in the postseason as there has never been a home-and-home signed between these two schools and at this point, we would be into the 2030s before Ohio State would have any real open date. The 2016 Fiesta Bowl is one that everyone is trying to forget as the Buckeyes were shutout, 31-0 in a season where the Buckeyes were right on the edge of the playoff field. The two teams met a couple of years prior and Ohio State dropped a 40-35 game in the Orange Bowl a game that the Buckeyes led early in the 4th quarter but could not hold on as the Tigers would score a late touchdown. Ohio State fans will remember a critical fumble by Ohio State that really turned the tide. And then there was the Gator Bowl in 1978, and we know what happened there.

Not sure we all want to relive this one, so we will be brief. Ohio State had a couple of calls go the other way including a touchdown being taken off the board in the replay booth as well as the ejection of Shaun Wade on a poorly enforced targeting call. But give Clemson credit as well as quarterback Trevor Lawrence who used his legs to be a difference maker and while the memories will remain of how Ohio State was unable to catch an even ruling on just about anything, Lawrence is a special play and made some plays. Even with that, Ohio State was driving in the closing moments to win the game and a miscommunication between Justin Fields and Chris Olave where Olave broke off a route led to the game-sealing interception. The game put a fire in a lot of Ohio State players to give this another go and try and answer for a game that was more than in grasp, only to get away. Now there is a chance to answer for that game, but it will be a tough one as the Tigers have a lot of the same names in some key roles.

The Tigers were able to answer for their loss to Notre Dame earlier in the season with a big win in the ACC Championship game, this time with Trevor Lawrence and several defensive starters in the line-up. Even without those names the Tigers went to overtime with the Irish before calling in 2OT, 47-40. Clemson had its game against Florida State cancelled two weeks later, with Clemson already in Tallahassee (Fla.) the day of the game, creating a war of words between the two programs. The Tigers won all of their other games but were not always sharp, having to gut out a win against Boston College and then having games against UVa and Syracuse that were in question much longer than they needed to be, despite 18 and 26-point margins. Ultimately this season is going to be remembered for the two games against the Irish and to Clemson’s credit, they won the one that mattered the most in clinching yet another league crown. The final score may have read 34-10 but the game was nowhere nearly that close. Clemson threw for 322 yards and rushed for 219 in a complete team win where the Tigers were just way too much for the Fighting Irish.

Obviously it is Trevor Lawrence, but we want to start by talking about Travis Etienne, who has not been as dominating as he was last season. The Clemson running back did break the 100-yard mark in this game, the first time since he went for 149 yards against Miami in early-October. Now, a little bit "off" Etienne is still really good for about anyone else, but he has not been the difference maker that he had been in years past.

Now on to Lawrence, it really is not much of a leap to say he is the player to watch. He threw at about a 70-percent clip against a good Notre Dame defense, had 322 yards and a pair of touchdowns. It was a good answer for a bad game against Virginia Tech two weeks ago where he threw for sub-55-percent passing, only completed 12 passes and just 195 yards. But when you look at the big picture, Lawrence may not be putting up the numbers of Mac Jones at Alabama or getting some of the mentions of some of the other national QBs (Kyle Trask at Florida as one) but he is a steady performer and the Buckeyes know all about what Lawrence can do, not only with his arm but his legs as well.