Ohio State has far fewer returning starters for the 2025 season than it did the last two times it was the defending national champion.
After winning the first-ever College Football Playoff title in 2014, Ohio State brought back 15 of its primary starters for the 2015 season. After winning the BCS national championship in 2002, Ohio State brought back 13 of its primary starters for the 2003 season.
Ohio State’s 2025 lineup, on the other hand, will include just seven players who started a majority of its games in 2024. The Buckeyes have to replace 17 players who played major roles for them this past season, 15 of whom were invited to the NFL Scouting Combine as projected draft picks.
The Buckeyes would surely love to have more of their key contributors from their run through the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff back for another season. Yet the results of Ohio State’s past title-defending teams who brought back most of their starters from their title-winning seasons show that wouldn’t have guaranteed success – at least not at a championship level.
And it’s well within the realm of possibility that the 2025 Buckeyes could outperform Ohio State’s previous teams that were defending national championships, in large part thanks to the ways college football has changed since the last time Ohio State was defending a national title.
Ohio State entered the 2015 season with as much hype as it’s ever had to enter a season – at least until this past season – as it returned a majority of its top stars from 2014 including Ezekiel Elliott, Joey Bosa, Michael Thomas, Taylor Decker, Eli Apple, Vonn Bell, Darron Lee and the quarterback duo of J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones, among others. Yet the 2015 Buckeyes looked burdened by the weight of those expectations all year long, struggling to beat several unranked opponents before suffering a 17-14 loss to Michigan State that kept them out of the Big Ten Championship Game and CFP.
The 2003 season looked similarly primed for a potential repeat championship as those Buckeyes also had a multitude of returning stars like Chris Gamble, Will Smith, Michael Jenkins and quarterback Craig Krenzel, among others. Despite having a school-record (at least for the next two months) 14 players who would go on to be selected in the 2004 NFL draft, those Buckeyes also fell short of expectations, losing two regular-season games to Wisconsin and Michigan while struggling to beat several other opponents along the way.
How Ohio State Teams Have Fared As Defending National Champions
Year Record Final Rank
2015 12-1 4
2003 11-2 4
1971 6-4 NR
1969 8-1 4
1962 6-3 13
1958 6-1-2 8
1955 7-2 5
1943 3-6 NR
In terms of claimed national championships, the closest Ohio State has ever come to repeating was in 1969, another team that entered the season with enormous expectations as the “Super Sophomores” who led the Buckeyes to a national championship in 1968 became juniors. Yet that team also came up short in the end, suffering a 24-12 loss to Michigan in its regular-season finale after dominating its competition for the rest of the year.
That’s not to say that past Ohio State championship teams who had more roster turnover fared better. After the star-studded senior class bounced back from its 1969 heartbreak to win another national championship in 1970, Ohio State went just 6-4 in 1971 as it returned only four starters from the year before. That could serve as a warning for the challenge that lies ahead for the 2025 Buckeyes (as could Michigan’s dropoff last season – at least until it played Ohio State – after it lost 18 starters from its 2023 national championship team).
But the 2025 Buckeyes have a couple of benefits that none of their previous national championship-defending teams did.
For one, Ohio State has the benefit now of being able to add transfers who can play immediately, which helps mitigate the amount of experience it lost from last season. While Ohio State has only seven returning starters, it added transfers like former Purdue tight end Max Klare, former Rice offensive tackle Ethan Onianwa, former West Virginia running back CJ Donaldson, former Minnesota offensive tackle Phillip Daniels and former Idaho State defensive end Logan George who bring starting experience from elsewhere and have the potential to be immediate-impact players for the Buckeyes.
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