Ohio State Buckeyes 31, Minnesota Golden Gophers 24

The snow did have some effect on the Ohio State gameplan for J.T. Barrett and the offense Saturday.

(Marvin Fong)

MINNEAPOLIS -- College football is how often you win, but also who you beat and how you look doing it. Is dazzling observers, especially those on the College Football Selection committee, more difficult in the cold?

"The thing that was a mess was the snow and that kind of stuff," Urban Meyer said. "Like I said, any team in the country, to come up here in the middle of November and go play, have at it."

To be clear, Ohio State's 31-24 win at Minnesota at Saturday wasn't in a blizzard, though the light snow was steady. And it wasn't all that windy. The biggest adjustment was the cold itself, with Ohio State reporting that the kickoff temperature, announced by Minnesota at 15 degrees, was the coldest for an Ohio State game in 50 years, since the 1964 Michigan game.

So that had some effect on the game and the gameplan for quarterback J.T. Barrett.

"It did a little bit going in to this week," offensive coordinator Tom Herman said. "We didn't think that the snow would be as continuous as it was. We thought it might snow here and there. We felt like the wind wouldn't be that big a deal.

"It certainly affected J.T. in the throw game a little bit in the first half. I'm not making excuses. It went into it a little bit heading in, but then certainly in the second half, after we saw the effect it was having, it played a part in how we were adjusting in the second half."

Barrett completed 11 of 20 passes for 144 yards in the first half and 4 of 5 passes for 56 yards in the second half. Barrett did not wear a glove on his throwing hand at Michigan State last week, but he did against the Golden Gophers on Saturday.

Barrett said he practiced with the glove all week, so any misfires came down to "I've just got to make the throws."

But Saturday was a new experience for the native of north Texas, who said he knows cold, but he had never played in anything like that.

"No, I have not," Barrett said. "Being from north Texas, it gets cold, a little icy, but that's around February. This is November. It was cold out there."

It was the same cold for both the Gophers and the Buckeyes. But it wasn't that way around the country, and the Buckeyes are playing against everyone else in the playoff race. Of course, there can be other factors. In Miami for the Florida State-Miami game, the TV announcers said it was warm enough that the players had to worry about wearing down in the November heat.

That's a long way from Minnesota. If how you look matters, there were at least some Buckeyes who contended that on a Saturday like that in Minnesota, no team was going to look good. That's what defensive tackle Michael Bennett, already upset with Ohio State's run defense, wrote on Twitter.

I wonder how an sec team would perform if bowl games were played in 10 degree weather and snow. Big factor — Mike Bennett (@mike96bennett) November 15, 2014