From: BleacherReport.com -

The 2002 national championship game is controversial because Ohio State won by a referee’s bad call. Not a missed call, a bad call.

It came four seconds after the game ended, while the Hurricanes were celebrating victory. If it were a blatant penalty in a big game, a flag would have been thrown immediately.

Miami fans agree it was a bad call. Ohio State fans rationalize that the referees missed a call earlier in the game when a Miami player stepped out of bounds.

Nobody is going to sort it out now. The tainted game is history.

The important question now is this: Will the Buckeyes steal another national championship with its 2010 schedule, which is loaded with cupcake teams to advance Ohio State into the title game?

The schedule is ideal for that to happen. Five out of their first six games are nothing more than scrimmages. They play Marshall, Ohio, Eastern Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana- hardly murders row.

They have a September 11 test with Miami, who was a third place team in the ACC conference last year. The Buckeyes don’t face their next real test until October 16 at Wisconsin.

While other teams are facing stiff competition before mid-October, Tressel has time to mold his team into a well-organized unit while not being challenged on the field.

He can develop Pryor from being a broken-play quarterback into solid decision-maker.

The lightweight schedule will help Ohio State avoid injuries, spend more time preparing for Wisconsin, and increase playing time for back-up players.

This amounts to an unfair advantage of extended practice time to prepare for the remainder of the season.

The inordinate amount of Buckeye preparation time is not limited to the Wisconsin game. Ohio State has Big Ten bottom-feeders Purdue and Minnesota, with a bye before the Penn State and Iowa games.

This gives the Buckeyes a huge advantage of three more weeks without serious opposition to prepare for the last two credible Big Ten opponents.

The absence of quality opposition, with lengthy periods between meaningful games, is a luxury top teams from the SEC and Big Twelve don’t enjoy.

Take preseason favorite Alabama. They play top-ten ranked Florida and middleweights Penn State, Arkansas, South Carolina and Ole Miss by mid-October.

Florida, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and others also have strong challengers before mid-October.

These national championship contenders have greater tests earlier where they can sustain injuries and heartbreaking losses.

They have to expose their strategies against better competition, while Ohio State reveals little in its tune-up games.

The question remains: Is there sufficient competition on Ohio State’s schedule to warrant playing for the national championship? The answer becomes clearer with a team-by-team analysis of the Buckeye……..

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