Why Ohio State, Notre Dame and college football’s championship game wouldn’t be in the playoffs: Why did Ohio State not play the NCAA championship game?

In a previous era of college football, the two teams in Monday night’s championship game — Ohio State and Notre Dame — wouldn’t have been in the playoffs at all.

For most of the history of the top level of college football, a team had to go undefeated in the regular season, or else get very lucky, in order to contend for a title. A single bad regular season loss often would doom those chances.

There have been titles for Ohio State in the last few years. In the 10 years that the playoffs were a four-team affair, Notre Dame made it two times, while Ohio State only qualified half the time. Notre Dame hasn’t won a championship in over two decades.

The old system may have hurt the title hopes of both teams. They will compete for the first-ever championship in the expanded playoffs, which will be held on the sport’s biggest stage.

The college football teams are from the Midwest, which is noteworthy in the modern era. College football has become dominated by teams from the South, which have won all but two of the last 19 titles.

In the history of college football, no black or asian coach has ever taken his team to a national title. Freeman, whose father is Black and mother is South Korean, is already the first to coach in the title game — a Notre Dame victory would make him the first to win.

Source: What to know about Ohio State, Notre Dame and college football’s championship game

Jeremiah Smith’s biggest game: winning the 12th-team tournament against the Ohio State Ducks in a young quarterback’s absence

The jewel of Ohio State’s $20 million roster is the 19-year-old budding superstar wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, a 6-foot-3 true freshman who has lived up to the hype that surrounded his recruitment out of high school.

Smith has racked up 1,227 receiving yards and 15 total touchdowns this season. His biggest game was when Ohio State beat the Oregon Ducks. Smith caught 187 yards on seven receptions, two of them for touchdowns — and he did almost all of it in a dominating first half.

Ohio State’s 28-14 semifinal win over Texas may look lopsided from the final score. But two of Ohio State’s touchdowns came on long plays — a short screen pass that turned into a 75-yard touchdown just before halftime, and the game-clinching 83-yard fumble recovery for a touchdown in the final minutes of the game.

Quarterback Riley Leonard’s legs have been a difference-maker all season long for the Irish. But in the semifinal against Penn State, it was his arm that came through in the game’s biggest moments — including a 54-yard touchdown to tie the game late, then a key first down completion with 17 seconds remaining that put them in easy field goal range for the game’s final score. Is he able to help the Irish again?

It was that 56-yard gain that made Ohio State the champion of the new 12-team playoff and just as it had been 10 years ago when they won the first four-team tournament.

“They were running man coverage and I said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna let this loose and let him make a play on it,'” Howard said of a play that felt about 100 years removed from Ohio State’s once program-defining “Three yards and a cloud of dust.”

This was a victory that not many thought was possible seven weeks ago, when a loss to Michigan put Ryan Day in danger of losing his job.

The Buckeyes Lost Against Notre Dame in the Final Second Half of the Big Big Bent Tournament. Jeremiah Howard’s 88-yard Run

There is a group of guys who overcame some tough situations, and at a point where there was a lot of people that thought they couldn’t win, they just kept swinging and kept fighting.

The game went down in the middle of SEC country, where it looked like a Christmas tree, with both Notre Dame and Ohio State fans dressed in red and green.

Notre Dame came back to make it a one-score game late in the fourth quarter. The in-stadium camera found legendary Irish coach Lou Holtz in his luxury box, and he ignored all those booing Buckeye fans and flashed a thumbs-up.

But Notre Dame’s time was running out. After stopping the Buckeyes on their first two plays and using their timeouts, the Irish put Christian Gray — whose interception wrapped up Notre Dame’s semifinal win over Penn State — in single coverage on Smith.

Howard, a transfer-portal success story from Kansas State, threw for 231 yards and two scores, but nothing will beat the pass to Smith with everything on the line.

The receiver, who had been bottled up by Texas in the semifinals then fairly quiet for most of this game, finally got loose for the kind of play he’s been making all year. He had five catches for 88 yards.

“We wanted to give him that shot at the end of the day,” Day said. We hadn’t thrown it all night and I wanted to be aggressive and lay it on the line.

After scoring a touchdown and adding a field goal in its first four possessions, the team didn’t look like they needed to take risks.

The score that made it 28-7 was set up by Quinshon Judkins running a 70-yard run, a transfer from Mississippi who highlighted Ohio State’s judicious use of the ever-growing portal.

The failed fake punt in the third quarter that led to a field goal for a 314-7 lead is one of many questions that will have to be answered by Freeman. It might have looked like a better call had Jeter’s kick not clanged off the left upright.

Really, though, Ohio State was the better team. The Buckeyes were able to surpass Notre Dame by a large margin. Howard completed his first 13 passes and never really got stopped. Ohio State punted once.

In the new, expanded playoff that was played over the course of four games, the Buckeyes rolled through their games with an average score of 36-21.

The seedings were meaningless for Ohio State. The poor seed won all of their games in the round of 64, and the better one won all their games in the title game.

The brawl after Michigan players tried to place a flag at the end of the game in November puts to rest any angst about the outcome of the game.

The whole scene left a lot of folks, both in and out of Buckeye circles, thinking Day, in his sixth season, had outlived his usefulness on a campus that hadn’t tasted a title in a decade.

Instead, the Ohio State marching band can dot the “I” next time with the national-title trophy. And Day can join a list of title-winning coaches with Urban Meyer (2014) Jim Tressel (2002), Woody Hayes (“Three yards and a cloud of dust”) and Paul Brown (who went on to become the namesake of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns).

Also, Day’s .873 winning percentage coming into the game was third among coaches with 50-plus games — one spot behind none other than the Notre Dame legend Knute Rockne, himself.

Source: Ohio State defeats Notre Dame 34-23 in college football championship game

The Big Ten had a Back-To-Back Championship: Michigan’s Missingest Spectacular Year in a Buckeyes Reaction

Instead, another kind of history. This marked the first time the Big Ten has taken back-to-back titles since 1942. Last year’s champion was Michigan, which was sitting home watching this one, but still played a special role in a Buckeyes redemption story hardly anyone saw coming.