Ohio State will play in the Cotton Bowl rather than the Orange Bowl to avoid the possibility of the Buckeyes having to play Miami in the Hurricanes’ home stadium.
With No. 1 seed Indiana contracted to the Rose Bowl as the Big Ten champion and No. 3 seed Georgia contracted to the Sugar Bowl as the SEC champion, the College Football Playoff selection committee’s decision on where to send No. 2 seed Ohio State for its quarterfinal came down to Dallas and Miami.
While the Buckeyes still face the possibility of having to play a de facto road game at the Cotton Bowl if No. 7 seed Texas A&M defeats No. 10 seed Miami in their first-round matchup, the committee decided that would be preferable to having Ohio State play the Hurricanes on their actual home field at Hard Rock Stadium.
“Looking at the potential second-round matchups for Ohio State and either Texas A&M or Miami, the fact that Miami, if they had won that game, would have had a huge advantage playing on their home field in the Orange Bowl, where if Texas A&M wins that game, playing in the Cotton Bowl while in Texas is a true neutral-site field; for that reason, that’s how we assigned Ohio State to the Cotton Bowl,” College Football Playoff selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said Sunday on a media teleconference.
Yurachek was also asked about the committee’s decision to keep Ohio State ahead of Georgia as the No. 2 seed despite its Big Ten Championship Game loss to Indiana. With both teams having identical 12-1 records, the selection committee decided to keep the Buckeyes above the Bulldogs because Ohio State has been statistically better than Georgia on both sides of the ball.
“You had a 1 versus 2 matchup in the Big Ten, Indiana and Ohio State, a hotly contested game. Indiana won by three, but Ohio State missed a late field goal that could have potentially tied that game and sent it into overtime. They had another failed fourth-down conversion there in the second half. I thought that game was really, really close,” Yurachek said. “Then, when you look at comparatively Georgia to Ohio State, their schedule strengths are relatively similar as are their record strengths, but statistically, especially on the offensive and defensive side of the ball, Ohio State looks a little bit better on the statistical side. So that’s why the committee chose to give the nod to Ohio State over Georgia in that 2-3 setting.”
Ohio State will make its third Cotton Bowl appearance in as many years. The Buckeyes lost to Missouri in the 2023 Cotton Bowl, a non-playoff game, before beating Texas in a semifinal game in last season’s CFP – a game best remembered for Jack Sawyer’s epic scoop-and-score touchdown.
