If one were to take the cynic's point of view, they'd say the entire Big Ten season was revived specifically for this game. There was a reason, after all, Ohio State pounded the table the longest and the loudest for the season to be played.
And now here these 2020 Buckeyes are, with a chance to cash a check their mouths have been writing these past five months, an opportunity to right a wrong a full year in the making.
It's fitting that this season of destiny has run into a purple-and-orange roadblock. Ohio State and Clemson have played four times previously -- all of them Clemson wins, all of them devastating blows to Ohio State football.
They first met in the 1978 Gator Bowl, a Clemson victory that ushered in a swift and embarrassing end to the Woody Hayes era.
The Tigers and Buckeyes wouldn't meet again until the 2014 Orange Bowl, a 40-35 Clemson victory that handed Urban Meyer his first non-conference loss in scarlet and gray.
They would meet twice more in the Fiesta Bowl. Clemson won 31-0 in 2016, which propelled the Tigers to the national championship and the Buckeyes into a staff makeover. Clemson won again last season, a classic Herb Brooks "take it to your f'n grave" game for Ohio State. The Buckeyes built a 16-0 lead that should've been 28-0, then watched it wilt away in a 29-23 loss.
They've spent 365 days planning for this game, 150 of them begging for the opportunity, and now it's arrived.
"We know you don't want to see us here," Ohio State wide receiver Chris Olave narrates in the program's Sugar Bowl hype video. "And we know you don't give us a chance. That's fine. After all we've fought through, we just need one chance, a second chance."
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.