The weekend that college football fans have long dreamed of – and spent countless hours arguing about – is finally here.
Kicking off at 8 p.m. ET Friday, the first round of the new and expanded College Football Playoff is bringing winner-moves-on, loser-goes-home football to campuses for the first time. It all gets started from historic Notre Dame Stadium when the seventh-seeded Fighting Irish take on the 10th-seeded Indiana University Hoosiers on ESPN.
Three storyline-rich games follow on Saturday when six-seed Penn State hosts 11-seed Southern Methodist University (noon ET on TNT), five-seed Texas hosts 12-seed Clemson (4 p.m. ET on TNT) and eight-seed Ohio State hosts nine-seed Tennessee (8 p.m. ET on ESPN).
Watching from home and waiting to see who they’ll play in the quarterfinals on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State.
Here are five-ish things to watch for during the weekend’s football extravaganza:
An in-state rivalry, kind of, between Indiana and Notre Dame
It’s only about 200 miles to drive from Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Indiana, to Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend. But in terms of program history and college football tradition, these two schools could not be further apart.
That makes their meeting here – in the first ever top-level College Football Playoff game played at an on-campus stadium – all the more remarkable.
Indiana and Notre Dame kick off the first round of the playoff on Friday night in what will be their first game against each other since 1991 – a 49-27 drubbing by Notre Dame on the same field. The teams have only played 28 times since their first meeting in 1898, and the Hoosiers haven’t beaten the Fighting Irish since a 20-7 win in 1950.
But this is not the traditional Indiana football team. Under Associated Press Coach of the Year Curt Cignetti, they are a threat to the traditional powerhouse up north.
“It’s an 11-1 football team, very talented, but you can tell they’re coached well. They play, as I often say, with the clarity that you look for when you watch film,” said Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman on Sunday. “It’s a team that plays fast, a team that understands what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, how they’re doing it and so you can tell they understand what’s expected of them.”
Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke and the high-powered Hoosiers offense will aim to prove they can move the ball against a stout Notre Dame defense that ranks in the top 10 in overall yards against, third in pass defense and third in points allowed per game. Notre Dame faces its own offensive test as the 10th-ranked running offense in the country goes against Indiana’s top-ranked rushing defense.
It’s been a challenging period of preparation for Cignetti and his staff, he said on Monday, but don’t expect the Hoosiers to shrink from the moment under the lights at one of college football’s most iconic venues.
“We’ll be better in a hostile environment than we were that particular day,” Cignetti said of the last time his team played in a tough road venue against Ohio State in Columbus. “At the end of the day, it’s just football. The game is going to be won or lost between the white lines. I want them to go out there, fly around, have a little swag and play the way we can play.”
Head coaches at Penn State and Ohio State on the hot seat
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day has a career record of 66-10. Penn State head coach James Franklin is 99-41 during his tenure in Happy Valley. Both coaches have won conference championships, played in major bowl games and have made their programs perennial playoff contenders.
And both of them might be coaching for their jobs on Saturday.
Day and Franklin are both getting a reputation for coming up short in the biggest games and former pros and current TNT Sports analysts Champ Bailey and Takeo Spikes believe Saturday represents a must-win situation for both coaches.
“When you look at all the prior years, Penn State would always finish anywhere from nine to 12 in the rankings,” Spikes told CNN Sport. “This has been a high ranking to where they are now, and you’re fortunate enough to be able to get a home game. This is the thing that really puts a lot of pressure on these guys, especially Coach Franklin. When you look at where they’re slotted, they’re really slotted in a good chance … is really set up for them to have success.”
Bailey put it much more succinctly.
“He better win this game,” the Hall of Famer said. “This is it. You’re telling me you’re going to have SMU come to Happy Valley and you drop the ball? That’s completely unacceptable. … You gotta win this game. Yeah, his career might be on the line for this one, at least at Penn State.”
After a fourth-straight heartbreaking loss against Michigan that kept Ohio State out of the Big Ten championship game, Day is facing a similar situation.
The Buckeyes fanbase is furious at the sixth-year head coach and he’s facing a talented Tennessee team that is expected to bring plenty of fans north to Columbus. Another loss in a high-stakes game and Day could be run out of town, Bailey warned.
“One thing about Ryan Day is he’s been a helluva recruiter. They have the most talent on any roster in college football,” Bailey said. “You can’t ignore that. But when it comes down to it, if you’ve got so much talent, why are you not winning these big games? And for some reason in those games, they don’t play like we see them play throughout the year. It’s catching up to him. … You gotta win the big games. For him, if he loses this game to Tennessee at home, it’s probably a wrap for him.”
SMU comes back from the dead
In 1987, the NCAA killed the Southern Methodist University football program. Literally, it received what was colloquially called the college sports governing body’s “death penalty.”
The school became a football powerhouse in the early 1980s thanks to banned payments to players and repeated recruiting violations – infractions that would largely be OK under the rules as they are today. It was a scheme that was executed with the full knowledge of much of the football coaching staff and school officials, according to the in-depth ESPN documentary “Pony Excess.” The program was eventually caught violating rules multiple times in the early 1980s, leading the NCAA to issue its harshest possible penalties.
The Mustangs’ football program was banned from competing for a year, and the school decided against competing in 1988 because it wasn’t sure that it would be able to field a legitimate team. For decades, SMU was cast off into football irrelevance and served as a cautionary tale for when the pursuit of success on the gridiron gets out of hand.
The 2024 Mustangs are looking to change that narrative.
Led by quarterback Kevin Jennings, the Mustangs fell one clutch Clemson field goal shy of capturing the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) championship in their first year in the conference and have racked up an 11-2 record. Heading into Saturday’s game against Penn State, the Mustangs are aiming to prove they belong on the game’s biggest stage after beating out Alabama for the final spot in the playoff.
“It validates that SMU is back where we belong. We’re on the national stage, we’re in a big-time conference. We’re competing for a national championship,” said head coach Rhett Lashlee after being named to the playoff field. “Our brand and our name and this team has earned the respect, not only for this team but for our program.”
The Mustangs will face one of the most intimidating atmospheres in college football – a white-out at Beaver Stadium in front of about 107,000 roaring fans. It’s a chance that SMU fans and alumni will have been dreaming about during the darkest days of the incredibly long rebuild since those dark days in the late 1980s.
Texas has a massive opportunity ahead of them
Having shaken off the disappointment of even having to play on Saturday, the Longhorns might actually be one of the few teams better off for having lost their conference championship game.
The dramatic overtime defeat to Georgia in the Southeastern Conference championship earlier this month gave the Bulldogs a first-round bye and sent Texas back to Austin to prepare for a home playoff game. But getting 12-seed Clemson as their opponent – a disappointing 10-3 Tigers team that only got into the playoff thanks to beating SMU in the ACC championship game – eased that pain.
It’s a cardinal rule of football to focus on the game and opponent in front of you each week, but it’s been hard for fans and analysts not to peek ahead at what awaits the Longhorns. Beat Clemson at home in Austin on Saturday and a game against Big 12 champion Arizona State looms in the Peach Bowl. Win that game and the Longhorns play what might as well be a home game in the Cotton Bowl, played about three hours north of campus at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
It’s an enticing scenario, one that’s hard for Longhorn fans to completely ignore as they get ready to watch their team clash with Dabo Swinney’s Clemson Tigers on Saturday. However, overlooking a program with such a recent track record of success, even if this year was largely a disappointment in Clemson, is a big risk.
“This is a complete football team and a great challenge, but we’re looking forward to it,” Swinney told reporters on Monday. “These guys are – I mean, they’re excited, they’re proud of themselves and they should be. They won this league, and they’re one of 12 teams in the playoff. They earned it. These guys, they all want to compete at the highest level.”
Tennessee-Ohio State is a marquee matchup to end the first round
The last game of the first round might be the most anticipated.
It’s a clash of two college football blue bloods in one of the game’s most storied stadiums as Tennessee takes on Ohio State under the lights at Ohio Stadium in Columbus. The game pits two of the winningest programs of all time – Ohio State is second, Tennessee is 14th in all-time wins – against each other in primetime to wrap up the first round.
Both teams come in sporting strong defensive units. Ohio State’s defense is the top-ranked unit in the country and Tennessee isn’t far behind, ranked fourth. Both teams are allowing less than 100 yards per game against them on the ground, and the Buckeyes’ pass defense is second only to Texas in pass defense.
For the host Buckeyes, it’s a moment when everything is on the line for the future of their head coach and a program facing intense pressure. For the Volunteers, it might be a bit more of a party up north.
According to data from StubHub, Vols fans are coming to take over the Horseshoe – 37% of the tickets sold on the resale platform have been to buyers from Tennessee, as compared to 34% from Ohio. Tennessee fans on social media have been urging their brethren to buy up as many seats in the 102,000+ seat stadium to make sure there’s a good amount of orange among the scarlet-out that Ohio State is planning.
“They’re playing with house money at this point,” said Spikes of Tennessee, “and all of the pressure is on Ryan Day after that Michigan game.”
The Ohio Stadium crowd is usually loud and raucous, but the November 30 defeat to Michigan showed that they could be taken out of the game. It’s also far from the only intimidating atmosphere the Volunteers have played in this year, having gone to Athens to play Georgia earlier in the season.
The key to the game for Spikes is whether Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly decides to open up the playbook beyond the short yardage running plays seen so often against the Wolverines.
“Chip Kelly needs to call a better game compared to the time when they played against Michigan. I thought Michigan dictated the game … defensively,” Spikes said.
He added, “It’s all about what type of game plan they’re going to come into this game with. If he allows the Tennessee defense to dictate the pace, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tennessee can walk away with this one.”
Honorable mention: It’s gonna be COLD
The predicted temperature at kickoff Friday in South Bend, Indiana? Twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.
The temperatures at kick in State College, Pennsylvania, and Columbus, Ohio? Twenty-six and 25 degrees, respectively.
The first round of the College Football Playoff is going to be absolutely freezing and teams have been prepping for it all week. The starkest difference in preparation may come in the game between Penn State and SMU, where the Nittany Lions are practicing in the cold and the Mustangs are basking in the mid-70s weather in Dallas before heading into the Appalachians.
“You practice in it, right? And so it just starts there. … It’s about knowing that we prepare in this stuff all the time, you know,” said Andy Kotelnicki, Penn State’s offensive coordinator, on Monday. “And we’re fortunate enough to have a home game. … We absolutely think it’s an advantage, right? Because we prepare in it all the time. It’s hard to mimic what you see outside right now today, for sure. So, I do think it’s an advantage.”
