If it feels like the Ohio State Buckeyes are always in the "best team in the country" conversation, it's because they are.

Since 1980, the Buckeyes have spent 448 weeks inside the Associated Press Top 10. That is nearly one full calendar year ahead of the second-place Alabama Crimson Tide, which has spent 396 weeks in that company.

There are essentially 20 weeks in a single football season, ranging from September to January. Using that estimation, Ohio State has spent nearly one-half (49.7%) of its last 45 seasons ranked in the AP Top 10.

In 41 of the past 44 seasons, the team has had a record over .500, with one of those years being the vacated 2010 season and another being the ensuing 2011 season, where the Buckeyes simply didn't have a chance.

In that frame, Ohio State has won double-digit games 24 times, a figure that would have been 25 if not for the COVID-shortened 2020 season.

Era after era, Ohio State football is built on winners. In the '80s, the Earle Bruce-led Buckeyes were solid. During his nine-year tenure, the Buckeyes had at least nine wins for six straight years after his 11-win debut season. After a 6-4 season in 1987, Bruce passed the torch to John Cooper, who took over through the 1990s.

Cooper's squad spent its first four seasons fighting to crack the top 25, but he ripped off four straight 10-win seasons as he took the Buckeyes into the 21st century. After two mediocre years spelled Cooper's end, the Jim Tressel era began, and the Buckeyes went from a good program to a top-tier program in America.

In Tressel's second year, he took the Buckeyes to a perfect 14-0 BCS National Championship over the Miami Hurricanes. Tressel's Buckeyes were just consistent winners year after year until the tattoo scandal ended his time in Columbus in 2011.

One year of Luke Fickell paved the way for Ohio to college football's version of the Death Star, as Urban Meyer came into the picture with immediate dominance. In seven years, Meyer never won fewer than 12 games and has one College Football Playoff National Championship to show for it.

Health issues and a scandal ended Meyer's era at the conclusion of the 2018 campaign, but he left his program in great hands with Ryan Day.

Day's run in Columbus hasn't skipped a beat from that point on. The only time that Day has finished with fewer than 11 wins was in 2020, thanks to the COVID-shortened season. Day etched his name in history in 2024 by leading the Buckeyes to a CFP National Championship.

Buckeye fans have been blessed with elite football year after year. The bad years can be counted on one hand, and compared to the rest of the country, it is clear that Ohio State has the best program in all of college football.