Five reasons why No. 3 Ohio State will win the College Football Playoff

There's only one team in the field that's beaten Alabama in a playoff game

As we approach the 2016 College Football Playoff, many are looking at the result as a fait accompli. Ask anybody who is going to win the CFP this year, and 99 percent of them will simply say "Alabama" or "Roll Tide."

It's a sensible answer. Alabama is the defending national champion, and it has looked like the best team in the country from the very first weekend of the season. Still, while Alabama is the favorite for good reasons, this is college football we're talking about here.

Strange things tend to happen in this sport, usually when you least expect them to.

If Alabama reaches the title game, one of the two teams they could possibly face there is Ohio State, and to overlook the Buckeyes is a dangerous gambit. After all, Ohio State was the first champion of the playoff era, and it's also been one of the best teams in the country all season long.

The Buckeyes are a team that can win their second national title in three seasons, and I'm here to tell you why.

1. They have the talent: Here's all you need to know about Ohio State and its depth. After last season, the Buckeyes had 12 players chosen in the NFL Draft with three taken in the first 10 picks, five in the first round and none taken after the fourth round. It's safe to say that just about any other program in the country that suffers those kind of losses will need a year to rebound, but not Ohio State. No, when it comes to the depth chart, only Ohio State can challenge Alabama when it comes to talent on the roster.

In the five years between the 2012 and 2016 recruiting classes, Ohio State put together classes in the top seven every season. Using the 247Sports Composite rankings, Ohio State has landed five five-star players and 80 four-star players in that five-year span. Aside from Alabama and Florida State, there just aren't many other programs that have recruited on such a high level in recent years. So no matter who the Buckeyes are playing, they're usually better than the players they're lined up against.

2. J.T. Barrett doesn't turn the ball over: Over the last three seasons, Ohio State's quarterback has thrown 807 passes and carried the ball 480 times. In those 1,287 touches, he's turned the ball over a grand total of 22 times (19 interceptions, three fumbles lost). Of those 22 turnovers, 11 of them came in 2014, Barrett's first season as a starter, and the year the Buckeyes won a national title.

This year he has seven turnovers (five interceptions, two fumbles). He's also accounted for 100 touchdowns over the last three seasons, so that's a pretty good touchdown-to-turnover ratio -- particularly for somebody who has the football in his hands so often.

Turnovers can play a key role in any game, but in a playoff game like the one Ohio State will play against Clemson, and a possible national title game after that where you're playing another great team, they take on even more importance. Barrett's ability to take care of the ball has been a major boost to the Buckeyes over the last three seasons.

3. Urban Meyer wins big games: Meyer is no stranger to the big moment. In his career as a head coach, Meyer has played in eight conference title games, two CFP games, two BCS title games and four major bowl games (New Year's Six, BCS bowls). In those 16 games, he's gone 12-4. Three of those games were against Alabama and Nick Saban (two SEC title games, and a CFP semifinal), and Meyer's teams have gone 2-1 in those games (he's 2-2 overall against Saban with a regular season loss to Alabama in 2010), including the most recent meeting in the 2014 Sugar Bowl.

Of course, one of those four losses came to Dabo Swinney and Clemson in the 2013 Orange Bowl.

Still, when it really matters, Meyer's teams rise up to the challenge more often than not, and it's not a coincidence.

4. Their defense can score, too: Ohio State's offense is potent enough, but the Buckeyes defense has proven to be quite adept at changing games with scores of its own. This season, the Buckeyes returned seven interceptions for touchdowns. That alone is impressive, but the rate at which Ohio State does so is remarkable as well.

The Buckeyes have 19 interceptions as a team -- which ranks sixth nationally -- meaning they turned 37 percent of their interceptions into pick sixes. No other team in the country had six this season with Alabama and San Diego State finishing behind the Buckeyes with five apiece.

The Ohio State defense isn't just talented and capable, it's opportunistic, and its ability to not only force turnovers but turn them into scores is one of the many reasons the Buckeyes have reached the playoff. And it's one of the reasons they can win another national title.

5. They has the experience: While Ohio State's opponent in the Fiesta Bowl has been in this situation before, the Buckeyes can claim something that Clemson cannot: they've not only won a national title in the playoff era (as well as the BCS era) but beaten Alabama to do it. Clemson reached the title game last year but fell short against the Tide.

Should Ohio State get by the Tigers and head to the title game, it will do so with the confidence of a team that doesn't just believe it can beat Alabama (or Washington), but knows that it can. That kind of confidence goes a long way in games like these.