College football 2020: Top 13 games we’ll hype up all offseason

5. Ohio State at Penn State

Date: Saturday, Oct. 24 – Week 8

Ryan Day’s Ohio State Buckeyes might be the team that intrigues me most for the 2020 college football season. As they have a fantastic offensive mind at head coach, a Heisman finalist in Justin Fields returning and elite weapons like Chris Olave and (hopefully) Master Teague, this team is going to be fun to watch and dangerous for any opponent to face. But they are also not a group without question marks.

The sneaky fact about the Buckeyes in their run to the College Football Playoff this season was how big of a role their defense played for them because Fields and the offense made so many headlines. The one big name, of course, was Chase Young and he’s now gone but so too are Jeffrey Okuday, Tuf Borland, Malik Harrison and Damon Arnette. Even at Ohio State, that’s a lot of roster turnover to deal with for one unit. Throw in the losses of J.K. Dobbins and K.J. Hill and that’s more to deal with.

On the flip side of this Week 8 matchup, James Franklin’s Penn State Nittany Lions aren’t having to deal with a great number of losses. Outside of star edge rusher Yetur Gross-Matos, most of the players that played key featured roles for the Nittany Lions in 2019 are going to be back in Happy Valley, most notably Sean Clifford off of a season where he flashed some high-end potential and the Micah Parsons led defense that was stout throughout the year.

As this game is in the middle of the season, we’ll likely have a good feel for both Ohio State and Penn State at this point in the schedule. While that may be true, this will be a great test for two Big Ten contenders to try and establish themselves as the cream of the crop in the midwest.