Trey Sermon signed on to the Oklahoma football program as a four-star, 2017 recruit, but his heart was really elsewhere.
When the College Football Playoff national championship game unfolds on Monday night from Miami, Sermon will be carrying the water for the Ohio State ground game. The 6-foot, 1-inch, 215-pounder from Marietta, Georgia, took over the lead running back spot for the Buckeyes after Major Teague was injured in the Big 12 championship game with Northwestern.
Sermon began his college career at Oklahoma , but Ohio State was always his first choice. The Buckeyes recruited him, but so did more than 20 other major programs, including Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and the Sooners. When Sermon injured his back his junior season in high school, Ohio State backed off his recruitment and signed J.K. Robbins, who is now in the NFL, instead.
The Sooners welcomed Sermon into the fold, and he produced immediately with 744 rushing yards his freshman season, including a 10-yard touchdown reception in the Oklahoma win at Ohio State. But he was No. 2 that season behind a fellow named Rodney Anderson, who gained over 1,100 yards on the ground.
Sermon’s sophomore season at Oklahoma was his best. He rushed for 947 yards and 13 touchdowns and averaged nearly 6.0 yards per carry. But that was also a breakout season for redshirt freshman Kennedy Brooks, who ran for 1,056 yards, 12 touchdowns and averaged 8.9 yards per carry.
While Sermon shared the running back duties with Brooks in the 2018 season, he was a clear No. 2 in the rotation the following season, and his season numbers reflected it. In 2019, Sermon carried the ball a third as much as he had the year before and ended the season with just 385 rushing yards.
With Brooks and Rhamondre Stevenson, who rushed for 515 yards in the 2019 season, expected back in 2020, Sermon saw the writing on the wall and elected to go elsewhere to finish his college eligibility. He saw a definite need and opportunity at Ohio State, as if there was ever a doubt what his first choice would be.
The irony is, with Brooks having opted out this season and Stevenson suspended for the first half of the 2020 season, this could have been Sermon’s year at OU. And the Sooners could have really used his services.
In late August/early September, with the COVID-19 pandemic still going strong, the Big Ten commissioner declared that the conference would not play football in the fall and instead consider a spring season. That left Sermon and the rest of the Ohio State team in limbo. That decision was, of course, later reversed, but Sermon’s Ohio State debut got off to a slow start.
In his first four game in a Buckeye uniform, he failed to gain more than 68 rushing yards. In his fifth outing, however, he rumbled for 112 yards in a 52-12 blowout of Michigan State. Then, the following week, in the Big 12 Championship, Sermon erupted for an Ohio State single-game record of 331 yards, eclipsing the record held by former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL star Eddie George. All but 60 yards of that total came in the second half.
Sermon’s momentum continued last Friday, as he was a big part of Ohio State’s national semifinal win over No. 2 Clemson, rushing for 193 yards and a touchdown.
For the season, Sermon leads Ohio State with 895 rushing yards and is averaging an impressive 7.5 yards per rushing attempt.
Sermon made appearances with Oklahoma in the 2017 and 2019 College Football Playoffs, but the Sooners never made it past the first game.
With a major contribution from the former Oklahoma running back, Ohio State has made its way to this season’s college football national championship and Sermon gets a chance to accomplish what he was unable to as a Sooner: play for and win a national championship.