The College Football Playoff national championship game is set to conclude strong postseason runs for Ohio State, Notre Dame, and ESPN.

Redemption Arch

Ohio State is favored to beat Notre Dame by more than a touchdown, which would give head coach Ryan Day his first title after his job status in Columbus was anything but certain just over a month ago. 

The Buckeyes failed to reach the Big Ten championship game after losing to rival Michigan as three-touchdown home favorites in November. At that point, Day’s $37 million buyout became a major talking point.

But three CFP wins later, Day is now 60 minutes away from possibly quieting the naysayers and clearing up his once murky future. This is Day’s sixth season at Ohio State, having signed a contract extension in 2022 that sees him earn a salary of more than $10 million.

Striking Gold

For Notre Dame, this CFP run has continued to validate the school’s independent status.

The recent wave of realignment raised questions about the Fighting Irish bucking tradition and joining a conference. Notre Dame can’t earn a first-round bye in the current structure of the CFP (even if they were undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation) which reserves those slots for conference championship game winners. 

And under third-year head coach Marcus Freeman (who received a contract extension in December), Notre Dame rallied from an embarrassing—and expensive—home loss to Northern Illinois in September, but now has a chance to upset Ohio State to win its first national championship since 1988.

Watch Party

The Ohio State-Notre Dame matchup should draw a big audience for ESPN, which typically doesn’t get to broadcast the best games involving these two schools. 

ESPN’s bread and butter is the SEC, which delivered big time this regular season, and the network also has ACC and some Big 12 rights. Ohio State’s biggest matchups usually end up on Fox, and Notre Dame’s on NBC.

But ESPN has the CFP’s media rights locked up through 2031 and benefits from postseason matchups regardless of conference affiliation. 

While viewership of the semifinals was down compared to last year, each round has drawn more viewers than the previous one, with all 10 CFP games thus far averaging nearly 15 million viewers. Last year’s Michigan-Washington national championship game drew 25 million viewers.

ATLANTA — Ohio State fan JD Vance wanted to attend the College Football Playoff national championship game in Atlanta to watch the Buckeyes take on Notre Dame. But he has something else on his schedule for Monday. 

“Hopefully,” Vance, the vice president-elect, wrote on X after the Buckeyes punched their ticket on Jan. 10, “everyone is cool with me skipping the inauguration so I can go to the national title game.” 

For the first time in CFP history, the title game will take place on the same day as Inauguration Day, thanks to the new 12-team schedule. President-Elect Donald Trump’s swearing-in is slated for around noon ET indoors, at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. Then, the CFP title game kicks off at 7:30 p.m. ET several hundred miles south in Atlanta. 

CFP executive director Rich Clark—himself deeply familiar with federal government operations as an Air Force lieutenant general—said having the inauguration and the CFP on the same day is a “good thing.” 

“It’s a big day for the country,” he told reporters Saturday. “And then, everybody can take a breather and watch a great football game at night—a whole different part of our American fabric. … And it’s MLK Day, which is also a significant day for all of us.” 

Earlier in the season, the first 12-team CFP rankings reveal coincided with Election Day. ESPN revealed the rankings just before the first big wave of polls closed on Nov. 5, ensuring viewers that they would be able to focus on the game and the poll results without much overlap. 

ESPN, however, has dealt with navigating CFP bracket reveals during elections before. The national championship, however, will have the inauguration as a pregame for the first time.

As Year 1 of the 12-team College Football Playoff concludes, potential further expansion is set to remain a major discussion point among the sport’s leaders.

Changes could come as soon as next season but are more likely to arrive in 2026 since the contract for the CFP’s current structure only runs through the 2025 season. 

The CFP is governed by its management committee, consisting of 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director, as well as a board of managers, comprising 11 university presidents and chancellors. Those leaders would have to approve any changes.

Numbers Games

Automatic bids for conference champions and Playoff seeding have been two of the most controversial aspects of the expanded CFP and could be the most likely to be altered.

No. 3 Boise State and No. 4 Arizona State were among the top four seeds that all lost in the quarterfinals. The Broncos were No. 9 and the Sun Devils No. 12 in the final regular-season CFP rankings, but received first-round byes for winning the Mountain West and Big 12, respectively. 

Clemson’s upset victory over SMU in the ACC championship game ultimately led to the Mustangs earning the final CFP bid over Alabama, despite much debate.

Is Bigger Better?

Should the CFP expand in the coming years, growing to 14 or 16 teams would be a logical next step.

Moving to 16 teams, for example, would eliminate first-round byes, but potentially give eight teams the chance to host on-campus matchups in the opening Playoff round, which were considered a huge success for Ohio State, Notre Dame, Penn State, and Texas last month.