It's difficult, no matter what sport you play, to repeat as champions.
Players become complacent. Others are lost via the allure of paydays and larger roles elsewhere. Opponents see you as a target and a barometer by which to measure their own success - they play you a little tougher, prepare a little harder.
The life of a champion is both covered in glory and immense difficulty. It's why the great ones like Bill Belichick, like Vince Lombardi, like Phil Jackson, are considered great.
They won - then won again. And again.
They found a way to keep that magical formula for winning, for pulling out all the stops, to reaching the summit and pushing tired, sore, bloodied bodies that one extra mile, that excruciating extra inch, to the Promised Land.
For the Ohio State Buckeyes and head coach Urban Meyer - who now has three national championships to his name - the 2015-16 season presents just such an opportunity.
After pulling off what seemed at the time an incredibly improbably run through the College Football Playoffs en route to a victory over the vaunted Alabama Crimson Tide in the NCAA National Championship Game, the Buckeyes are now faced with the proposition of pushing ahead on the scraggly slope to glory or falling back to the pack with the rest of the good, not great, teams which litter the college football annals.
Which fate awaits the 2015-16 Buckeyes?
"Ohio State's biggest challenge will be replicating the edge it played with post-Virginia Tech last season," writes FOX Sports' Stewart Mandel. "That loss, as bad as it was, seemed to drive the Buckeyes the rest of the season. They played with the confidence of an eventual national champ but the loose vibe of a team playing with house money. Obviously, that's no longer the case, and the longer its current 13-game winning streak continues, the more likely it is the team will feel the weight of expectations."
This seems to be one of the toughest obstacles for a champion to overcome - the ultimately singular nature of a season which brings ultimate glory. Things must go right, breaks must fall your way, adversity must be faced and overcome, mountains must be climbed - but in the right order and in due time.
Virginia Tech provided a fantastic rallying moment for the Buckeyes - something which is not easily replicated.
"Secondly, as much as Urban Meyer's quarterback quandary is primarily a luxury, and as well as those three guys seem to get along, who can say how the players will react once the day finally comes when one of Cardale Jones, J.T. Barrett or Braxton Miller gets the job and the other two do not? While on the surface it seems like the Buckeyes can't go wrong with any of them, it's an unprecedented situation and hard to visualize how it plays out," writes Mandel.
The quarterback question in Columbus has been asked time and again and will continue to be asked until the team takes the field or a definitive proclamation is made by Meyer. Miller and Barrett seem like some combination of second and third-fiddle to the upstart Jones, but who knows what Meyer has planned for the Buckeyes at signal-caller next season?
Only Meyer at this point - presumably.
"And finally, Ohio State, like any team, has holes to fill," Mandel writes. "It just has fewer than anyone else. Personally, I don't worry at all about the Buckeyes' offense. They've still got playmakers galore. But don't underestimate just how important a role that D-line played in shutting down Melvin Gordon, frazzling Blake Sims and containing Marcus Mariota. The team overall will be more talented and experienced, but if it regresses in that one area it won't be as good, period."
While the Buckeyes were able to overcome the losses of Ryan Shazier and cornerback Bradley Roby last season, defensive end Michael Bennett and cornerback Doran Grant again represent a couple of major losses for the Ohio State defensive unit.
Bennett especially will be difficult for the Buckeyes to replace, as his leadership and toughness off-the-field were just as integral to Ohio State's success as his talent and grit on it.
In the end, the Buckeyes still seem well-situated as the best team in college football.
Whether Meyer can lead them on their continuous ascent up the NCAA college football history mountain next season remains to be seen.
