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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Three weeks before Ohio State took the field for the first-ever College Football Playoff, Taylor Decker found himself unable to sleep.

It wasn't that the Buckeyes left tackle didn't want to. He simply didn't have time to.

Fourth-seeded Ohio State was preparing for a semifinal Sugar Bowl showdown with No. 1 Alabama, with the winner moving on to take part in the national championship. But while Decker got ready for arguably the toughest test of his college career against the vaunted Crimson Tide defense, it was another test—or tests—that kept him awake at night.

"Right at the end of the semester, we were going into finals, and we were also in bowl practice," Decker told Bleacher Report. "I had some pretty challenging classes during the season, and I had to study a lot to do well in them and do well in those final exams. There was like a three-day span where I had three or four exams and two of those three days I didn't even sleep."

Forget the national title, which the Buckeyes went on to win nearly a month later; for Decker, a junior Animal Sciences major with a minor in Business, his sleep-deprived finals week was the culmination of a 19-hour class load per week. It also happened to coincide with the final stretch of one of the most unlikely championship runs in college football history.

The NCAA limits a college football team's allowed practice time to 20 hours per week while class is in session, and like any elite program, Ohio State uses all of them. But when you take into account classes and any extra football-related activity players choose to take part in on their own, their weekly workloads often extend to 40 hours per week—if not more.

And for the Buckeyes, who started fall camp on Aug. 4 and won the national championship on Jan. 12, it was a grind that lasted nearly six months.

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"It definitely gets frustrating," linebacker Joshua Perry said. "You get pissed off, you get overwhelmed and you question things. But the biggest thing that we did this year was we had a really close group of guys. So when you're feeling that way, your buddy will automatically look at your face and know what's going on."

Perry, like Decker, took on a full class load in the fall, majoring in Consumer and Family Financial Services.

Given their football responsibilities, it'd be understandable if either player—both starters and prospects for the 2016 NFL draft—opted for a less-demanding major, one that would allow them to to meet the bare minimum to maintain eligibility. That's not to say that doesn't happen—both at Ohio State and around the country—but both Decker and Perry have insisted on getting the most out of their respective scholarships.

For Perry, a 6'4", 252-pound linebacker by way of Galena, Ohio, just outside Columbus, it's a matter of optimizing his college experience. Ohio State's leading tackler on the year with 124 takedowns, Perry said that he enjoys socializing with classmates as much as he does examining "how people interact instead of how markets interact" in his core classes.

"It would be a waste of an opportunity," Perry said of the idea that he could get away with just doing what it would take to stay eligible. "It's a shame to waste an opportunity because you don't get them very often. You should take advantage of it. That's how I feel about my education."

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Decker, meanwhile, has found an extra incentive to pick a major that matters. Protecting the blindside of the Buckeyes' quarterbacks throughout their national title run, the 6'7", 315-pounder is aware of his value to Ohio State and wants to make sure he's reimbursed.

"I basically view college athletes today as professionals. It's essentially our job to play football and go get an education," Decker said. "Obviously, the university makes all kinds of money off of the football team—that's just college sports, it is what it is—but why not take full advantage of the opportunity that you have to get an education so that you can live the rest of your life comfortably and happily with what you're doing?"

While both Decker and Perry have had their educations paid for with their athletic scholarships and anticipate graduating by next spring, their degrees still will have come at a price.

Between conditioning, classes, practice, film study and tutoring, days in the fall typically start early and end late. Perry says he doesn't mind his lack of free time, describing himself as a lingerer who spends every free moment he can at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, while Decker admitted that the long days took a toll on him.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tired and still am not tired every single day," Decker said. "There were days that I'd wake up at 5 [a.m.], and I don't get back to my house until 9:30 or 10:00 [p.m.]"

That's a demanding schedule in and of itself. And it doesn't even take into account the other stresses that accompanied the Buckeyes' unique 2014 campaign.

A season-ending injury to star quarterback Braxton Miller started Ohio State's 2014 season, while the final week of the regular season saw signal-caller J.T. Barrett go down with a fractured ankle and the shocking death of walk-on defensive lineman Kosta Karageorge. All the while, the Buckeyes found themselves on the outside looking in at the College Football Playoff, critical injuries occurring from fall camp through the playoff.

By the time Ohio State took the field for its 15th and final game of the season, the Buckeyes had lost no fewer than 12 players to season-ending injuries.

"If we had to practice one more day, we had to go against each other," Urban Meyer said. "There was no scout team, it was over."

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Despite all of the distractions football can cause before classes are even considered, Perry and Decker each stand by their decisions to pursue excellence both on and off the field. Decker even went as far to suggest there's a correlation between the two.

"We're trained on being so competitive and aggressive that I don't like to be told that I'm not doing a good job or I'm not trying or I'm not putting effort in," he said. "That's so much of what's stressed athletics-wise is competition and being the best. I know don't have the time to put as much into school as other people can with the demands that I have, but with the time that I do have, I do want to do the best I can.

"I feel like if you're the type of guy that's going to slack off in one aspect of your life, that's just the kind of person you are."

For both Decker and Perry—locks to be captains on Ohio State's 2015 team—their near six-month journey paid off, with each passing their winter exams weeks before acing their final on-field tests. With just a week to go until spring practice already, Decker admitted that he hasn't had much time to reflect on the Buckeyes' storied 2014 season—and he likely won't any time soon.

"The day we got back," Decker said of Ohio State's return from the national title game. "We had class the next day."

Ben Axelrod is Bleacher Report's Big Ten Lead Writer. You can follow him on Twitter @BenAxelrod. Unless noted otherwise, all quotes obtained firsthand. All statistics courtesy of cfbstats.com. Recruiting rankings courtesy of 247Sports.