In the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings, Ohio State earned the top spot in the rankings, a position the team has held since the rankings were first announced in Week 11.
The Buckeyes are set to face off against No. 2 Indiana in the Big Ten title game. The winner will claim the No. 1 seed while the loser could fall outside of the top four and a bye through the first week of the College Football Playoff.
Just a few days before the conference title game, head coach Ryan Day and company received some tough news – a top assistant coach is leaving to become the head coach of the South Florida Bulls.
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Offensive coordinator and wide receiver guru Brian Hartline is leaving the program for his first college head coaching job. According to multiple reports he’s expected to remain with Ohio State through the College Football Playoff before he takes over the Bulls program.
“Brian has been successful in every football capacity for which he has been engaged,” Day said in Hartline’s Ohio State biography. “He has progressed incredibly well from college to NFL receiver, and then from quality control coach to wide receivers coach and now to his roles as a coordinator. He has also developed his receivers at an unprecedented level and he has recruited as well or better than anyone in the country.”
After his days as a star wide receiver at Ohio State and a solid stint in the NFL, Hartline took over as a quality control coach at Ohio State in 2017. He was promoted to interim wide receivers coach in 2018 before locking down the full-time job from 2019-21. He was elected to passing game coordinator in 2022 and eventually named offensive coordinator in 2023 before becoming co-offensive coordinator during the team’s title run in 2024.
After Chip Kelly’s exit, he became the full-time offensive coordinator once again in 2025 as the Buckeyes eye back-to-back national titles.
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