The two teams that beat Ohio State this season will play for the national championship.
One day after Miami punched its ticket to the national championship game by beating Ole Miss with a last-minute touchdown in the Fiesta Bowl, Indiana bludgeoned its way to the national championship by blowing out Oregon, 56-22, in the Peach Bowl.
Indiana cornerback D’Angelo Ponds scored a pick-six on the game’s first play from scrimmage, and the Hoosiers never looked back from there. After Oregon tied the game with a touchdown, Indiana scored 35 unanswered points to pull away from the Ducks, who suffered a blowout loss in the CFP for the second straight year after falling 41-21 to Ohio State in last year’s Rose Bowl.
The Hoosiers and Hurricanes faced one common opponent on their way to the national championship game: Ohio State.
Ohio State was 12-0 and ranked as the No. 1 team in the country until it played Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game. The Buckeyes came as close as any team has come this season to beating the Hoosiers, who are 15-0 entering the national championship game, but Ohio State lost 13-10 after failing to score a single point in the second half.
The Buckeyes still earned the No. 2 seed in the College Football Playoff, but lost 24-14 to No. 10 seed Miami in the CFP quarterfinal at the Cotton Bowl after receiving a first-round bye.
It’s the second year in a row that a team suffered its only two losses of the season to the two teams that played in the national championship game. Indiana suffered its only two losses of 2024 to Ohio State and Notre Dame, the two teams that met in last season’s national championship game, which the Buckeyes won 34-23.
Ohio State and its fans are unlikely to take solace in seeing Indiana and Miami play for the national championship, knowing that the Buckeyes had their chances to beat both of those teams. But it proves that Ohio State’s losses came at the hands of two of the best teams in college football this season, one of whom will follow Ohio State as the second team to win the 12-team College Football Playoff in 10 days.
It’ll be the fourth straight year that the national champion is either Ohio State or a team that beat Ohio State along the way to winning the title.
The 2026 CFP National Championship Game, the only remaining game of the 2025-26 college football season, will be played on Jan. 19 (7:30 p.m., ESPN) at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. The Hurricanes will be playing in their home stadium, while Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, a Miami native, will be playing in his hometown. Indiana opened as a 7.5-point betting favorite.
