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The first on-campus Playoff game kicked off at 8:10 p.m. ET in front of 77,622 roaring fans at Notre Dame Stadium. The magnitude of this moment for a sport that has only ever played its postseason at bowl games and neutral sites.
The eighth-seeded Buckeyes were the biggest wild cards coming into the weekend. Who knew where their heads would be three weeks removed from their Michigan nightmare? Many of the fans who booed them off the field that day apparently stayed home for this one, as tens of thousands of orange-clad Tennessee fans infiltrated the Horseshoe.
Ohio State raced to a 21-0 lead en route to a 42-17 demolition of the ninth-seeded Vols. The Buckeyes’ star-studded offense did whatever it wanted, starting with quarterback Will Howard’s best performance of the season: 24 of 29 for 311 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.
Only head coach Ryan Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly can say why Ohio State’s offense has so rarely played to its potential, or why it flat-out no-showed against Michigan. But this version could win a national championship.
How would you like to be No. 1 seed Oregon watching that game? The Ducks went undefeated, including beating Ohio State at home in a classic – and now they’ve got to play the Buckeyes again in the quarterfinals? While Penn State gets Boise State? Seems like a bug.
But it’s going to make for a fantastic Rose Bowl – and a classic Big Ten-Pac-12 matchup, no less. Georgia is expected to be without injured quarterback Carson Beck, meaning backup Gunner Stockton will make his first career start against the nation’s top-rated pass defense.
As for the other matchups in the quarterfinals, Notre Dame may not have been at full strength. Standout defensive tackle Rylie Mills did not return after a sack and did not return, and starting right guard Rocco Spindler spent the second half in street clothes. The severity of those injuries is not yet known, though Marcus Freeman told ESPN that Mills’ injury was “not season-ending.”
Curt Cignetti’s Indiana was one of the best stories of the 2024 season, but boy did it end with a dud. It wasn’t just that the Hoosiers got blown out. The brash Cignetti, who just hours earlier on “College GameDay” proclaimed, “We don’t just beat Top 25 teams, we beat the s— out of them,” could not have coached more conservatively as IU punted from the Notre Dame 37 in the first quarter, settled for a field goal from the Irish 16 already down 14-0 and bafflingly punted down 20-3 in the fourth quarter.
Just like against Ohio State on Nov. 23, Indiana (11-2) was completely overmatched in the trenches, and quarterback Kurtis Rourke misfired to several open receivers. A disappointing end to the program’s best season in a half-century.
It was only a few years ago people were complaining that the four-team CFP was mostly the same teams every year. I personally enjoyed the novelty of watching Indiana in a Playoff game. At least until that punt.
With the game out of reach in the final minutes, ESPN’s Sean McDonough was not shy about questioning why Indiana, with its weak schedule, was included in the CFP in the first place. Kirk Herbstreit went in for more the next morning. In general, I agree with them that the committee needs to be more discerning about schedule strength.
But there was nobody else worth going to the mat for this season instead. The alternatives either lacked their own big wins (Miami), lost to bad teams (Alabama and Ole Miss) or lost to multiple other teams on the bubble (South Carolina).
It was only a few years ago people were complaining that the four-team CFP was mostly the same teams every year. I personally enjoyed the novelty of watching Indiana in a Playoff game. At least until that punt.
That’s not to say I have no beefs with the new format. Reserving the first-round byes for conference champions was well-intended, but it had a profoundly unfair effect on the seeding this first year. The No. 3 (Boise State) and No. 4 (Arizona State) seeds, both champions, are double-digit underdogs in their quarterfinals to the Big Ten (Penn State) and SEC (Texas) runners-up. That’s not how a bracket is supposed to work.
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