Ohio State’s 2025 season looked untouchable right up until it wasn’t. Ryan Day’s team rolled through the regular season at 12-0 and entered December ranked No. 1, only for Indiana to knock them off in the Big Ten Championship and Miami to end their season outright with a 24-14 upset in the Cotton Bowl. Jeremiah Smith isn’t pretending that second loss is out of his system.

At the Big Ten Media Days, CBS Sports’ Bud Elliott asked the obvious question on the Cover 3 Podcast: if Ohio State is playing a revenge season, who does Smith want another shot at more, Indiana or Miami? He didn’t need to think about it.

“Gotta be the hometown team,” he said. “Miami, gotta be. I heard it a lot every time I went back home. Gotta be Miami.”

That answer carries more weight than a typical rivalry jab. Smith grew up in Miami Gardens and starred at Chaminade-Madonna in nearby Hollywood, and Miami wasn’t just a bystander in his recruitment, they were genuinely close to landing him. Then-Hurricanes quarterback Cam Ward personally recruited Smith before Ward had even played a down at Miami, and Smith’s father later revealed his son came within a hair of flipping his commitment in December 2023, telling him he wanted to “gamble on myself.” His father talked him out of it, arguing Ohio State offered a safer path to the same ceiling. Smith stuck with the Buckeyes, but the door to South Florida never fully closed in the years since.

The Cotton Bowl reopened all of it. Miami jumped Ohio State early, built a 14-0 lead, and never let the Buckeyes find any rhythm. Smith did what he could, finishing with seven catches for 157 yards, but the stat line couldn’t change the scoreboard. Ohio State walked out with a 24-14 loss and an offseason full of questions.

 A rematch isn’t guaranteed either. The 2026 schedule locks in another meeting with Indiana in Bloomington on October 17, but Miami is different. That reunion only happens if both teams survive to cross paths again in the expanded Playoff field, and Smith sounds like he’s counting on it.

There’s added urgency behind all of this too. Smith has confirmed 2026 is his final college season before turning pro, meaning this is likely his last real chance to settle the score himself. Asked what a perfect season would look like, he kept it simple.

“Bringing more hardware back to Ohio State,” he said. 

If the revenge comments grabbed headlines, his honesty about the transfer portal probably made even bigger waves.

The $10 million offer that never tempted Jeremiah Smith 

At Big Ten Media Days, Jeremiah Smith confirmed reports that another program offered him $10 million to enter the transfer portal after the season. He explained that schools started reaching out after OC Brian Hartline left Ohio State to become South Florida’s head coach. Suddenly, everybody wanted to know whether the Buckeyes’ biggest star might be available. But he never seriously entertained the idea.

“Never really thought about leaving Ohio State, always wanted to be at Ohio State,” he said. “It would be dumb for me to leave Ohio State to go to another team when I have the best offense in the country, the best quarterback in the country, the best coaches in the country.”

He’s never publicly named the school behind the offer, and given his history with Miami, he hasn’t had to spell it out for people to draw their own conclusions.

“I knew after the Cotton Bowl that a certain program was going to come at me hard,” Smith said. “I’m not gonna say names, but I think everyone here knows who it was.”

Whether or not that speculation is accurate, Smith is entering his junior season with the loudest possible motivation on record, a hometown program he almost joined, an eight-figure offer he turned down, and a loss he’s openly said he wants to avenge. Ohio State opens its 2026 season against Ball State on September 5, the first step toward whatever collision course he’s hoping for with Miami later in the year.