With their imperfections, Notre Dame and Ohio State are perfect representatives of the promise of a 12-team playoff season.
Perfection, or at least near-perfectness, has long dominated college football’s national championship. The game did not have an official two-game losing streak in modern times; Minnesota’s claim to a separate championship in 1960 preceded a Rose Bowl loss to Washington, back in the era when the Associated Press declared its champion before the season.
Creating the playoffs, especially the third round, was a tough idea in college football because the full playoffs contradicted the pursuit of perfection.
But single-elimination tournaments are attractive because of the chaos that comes from their inherent unpredictability. Millions tune into the NCAA Tournament every March to see small schools in faraway places fall to giants with seemingly limitless resources.
The College Football Playoff will never be the same as Madness for a number of reasons. Not the least of those reasons is that football simply doesn’t lend itself to the same one-game variations that basketball does. However, the NFL Playoffs, which begin as the College Football Playoff ends, have brought plenty of drama, with Wild Card contenders continuing their Super Bowl runs.
The first 12-team playoff championship game is more like the NFL postseason than any past college football finale. The College Football Playoff could be even more chaotic, as the Super Bowl has never pitted two Wild Card teams against each other.
Notre Dame and Ohio State are both the College Football Playoff’s version of wild card participants.
Ohio State went from looking like an embarrassment in its regular-season finale loss to Michigan to playing the best football of any team on the field. After getting past Tennessee and avenging a regular season loss to Oregon in dominant fashion in the Rose Bowl, the Buckeyes showed their ability to win in a crunch time in the Cotton Bowl.
Will Howard’s fourth-down carry wasn’t 85 yards for the Heart of the South, but the quarterback’s 18-yard grab to cap a drive that culminated in a Quinshon Judkins touchdown could become an Ohio State legend.
Or, at least, it would have been if Jack Sawyer hadn’t given up a straight playoff streak. His pressure on Quinn Ewers as Texas drove for a game-tying touchdown led to a sack-clinching, scoop-point-point-point, one win away from an unprecedented national championship.
The Buckeyes are an important wild card team: a team with undeniable talent that is striking at the right time. Notre Dame is otherwise a wild card, having taken the nation’s longest winning streak into the playoffs while enduring mounting injuries and a possible flu outbreak.
While a win for the Fighting Irish champions would preserve college football’s long-standing tradition of winning one title or not losing, coach Marcus Freeman’s team is undeniably a wild card.
By staying committed to its independent tradition, Notre Dame can’t earn one of the automatic bids—not under the system’s current rules, anyway. However, ranked fifth going into the tournament, the Fighting Irish would not be in the field at all, despite winning 10 straight to close out their regular season.
That victory, now 13 games into the National Championship Game, came on the heels of what could be the only loss of the 2024 season with more questions than Ohio State’s loss to Michigan.
A 16-14 setback to Northern Illinois in Week 2 gave Notre Dame the kind of imperfection in its resume that would have been very unlikely for the Fighting Irish to overcome in past iterations of the college football playoffs.
“In your lowest moments, you find out a lot about yourself,” Freeman said following his team’s 27-24 Orange Bowl victory over Penn State. “We had some down times, but we had a really down time in Week 2, and these guys battled.”
Irish quarterback Riley Leonard’s individual effort in the Orange Bowl served as a microcosm of Notre Dame’s entire season: a difficult start with early setbacks and injury concerns but ultimately a big win.
Leonard’s pitch-and-catch connection with Jaden Greathouse, a 54-yard, game-tying touchdown, wasn’t the game-winner; Notre Dame still needed Christian Gray’s Drew Allar interception to set up Mitch Jeter’s decisive field goal.
But the touchdown reception that tied the game at 24-24 was the moment the Orange Bowl semifinal felt over. For whatever mistakes may have denied the Fighting Irish a championship in the past, they have overcome them in the 2024 season to earn this title opportunity.
Notre Dame or Ohio State is not good. And that’s a perfect reflection of what the new Playoff is meant to be.