By Cort Street | @cort_street

Sports Capital Journalism Program

ATLANTA – All they needed was a chance.

That was the message a decade ago, when, in the inaugural College Football Playoff, Ohio State battled through a devastating early-season loss and numerous injuries to key players but managed to capture the final seed of the expanded postseason and catch fire, taking home the national title in a thunderous validation of college football’s new era.

Now, under the lights of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and in the maiden voyage of the 12-team playoff, the Buckeyes rekindled the script of their most recent championship run and basked in the nostalgia of another glorious title that, despite all they had to overcome, effectively set them apart as the most proven champion of the modern era.

“I just can’t say enough about our guys and what they’ve overcome to get to this point,” said Ohio State head coach Ryan Day, now one of just four active head coaches with a national title. “They now have something to show for it.”

It was Jeremiah Smith’s 8-yard trot into the end-zone early in the second quarter, combined with Quinshon Judkins three touchdowns and Will Howard’s record-setting 13-for-13 start in the passing attack, that would set the tone for what would become a scarlet avalanche, as the Ohio State Buckeyes took down the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 34-23 to take home their ninth national championship in program history.

Ohio State (14-2) became the second consecutive champion from the Big Ten conference and the third in the 11 seasons of the playoff. The Fighting Irish (14-2) struck first in the affair, relying on the legs of quarterback Riley Leonard, in a methodical, physical touchdown drive that took nearly ten minutes off the clock. The confident senior quarterback, who finished the game with three total touchdowns, accounted for 65 of Notre Dame’s 75 yards on the first drive of the game, but the team could only muster 18 total yards the rest of the half.

“I would say that first drive was kind of uncharacteristic for us,” said Buckeyes’ linebacker Cody Simon, the Defensive Player of the Game. “We expected to go out there and kind of dominate that first drive, and they had a good first fifteen plays. …I think we really settled in and were able to get the stops we needed to get the offense to a lead that we wanted.”

From there, the Buckeyes offense, led by Offensive Player of the Game Howard’s 231 yards passing and two touchdowns, went on a furious 31-0 run that will long be remembered in the archives of college football history. They attacked the Irish defense with tenacity, picking apart the nation’s premier secondary with quick, short throws to their star wide receivers and utilizing the depth of their backfield to exhaust the Irish defense with consistent outside runs.

Wide receiver Emeka Egbuka, the talented senior wide receiver who chose to come back after a disappointing 2023 season to chase a championship rather than declare for the NFL draft, caught six passes for 64 yards. He demonstrated the physicality and aggressiveness that has come to define Ohio State through the 2025 playoffs when he tossed aside Notre Dame cornerback Christian Gray on a 12-yard reception in the second quarter – a reception that would ordain him as the all-time leader in receptions in Buckeyes’ history. Egbuka had the chance to reflect back over the course of his time at Ohio State after the game.

“I just look back over my four years here, especially all the adversity we face and everything we have to go through to get here, all the kindness, all the tears, happy moments, even the adversity – everything is just a culmination of the work that has led to this moment,” he said.

It was a shocking all-around collapse from an Irish defense that entered the game as the second-ranked unit in total yards allowed in the country. Notre Dame consistently appeared to be a step behind an explosive Ohio State backfield that totaled 214 rushing yards and 5.2 yards per carry. It was additionally the “middle eight” – the four minutes before halftime and the four minutes after – in which Ohio State managed to pull away with their lead, a period of time that Notre Dame had prided itself on dominating to this point in the postseason.

When Judkins broke free for a 70-yard run – the longest in CFP championship game history – that set up the Buckeyes’ early third quarter touchdown, it was clear that Ohio State was a team that was built for this moment in the shadow of the championship trophy, while the Irish would go down as the team that had fallen appallingly short.

While Notre Dame, whose usually explosive rushing attack that has averaged 210.8 yards per game amassed a season-low 53 yards, could not achieve their goal of a championship, the Irish did show fight until the very end, storming back into the affair with a wild comeback attempt that will ultimately go down as a footnote of history, but one that defensive coordinator Al Golden believes notably spoke to the character of his team.

“We just kept fighting,” he said in an emotional locker room after the game. “It was in their DNA.”

It was none other than Jeremiah Smith, the highly touted freshman who fell quiet for a large portion of the game, who burst into the spotlight when the Buckeyes needed him most. With Ohio State leading by one score and facing a critical third down with just over two minutes left in the game, Smith ran a simple go-route down the field, and Howard never doubted that his perfectly lofted pass would find its way anywhere but into the sure hands of the true freshman star for a 56-yard completion that would lead to the game-clinching score.

“I knew the ball was coming my way because it was man-to-man [coverage], and when it’s man-to-man I don’t lose, and I just made a play,” said Smith, who finished with five receptions for a team-leading 88 yards and a touchdown.

The win was the culmination of a grueling 16-game journey for the Buckeyes, a tally that will go down as the most games played in a season in program history. Along the way, Ohio State became the first team to take down five top-five opponents, surpassing Louisiana State in 2019, Southern California in 1967 and Notre Dame in 1943. The Buckeyes saved their best play for the end of the season, where they dominated their four playoff opponents by an average of 17.5 points per game.

“You can categorize us as one of the best college football teams of all time,” Egbuka said assuredly after the game. “I don’t think anyone’s gone through a gauntlet like we went through. And you know, when the first 12-team playoff came out, we saw how the brackets potentially played out. We knew we probably had the hardest path out there, but that’s exactly what we wanted. We welcomed it and we conquered it.”

The season was not without its adversity. The Buckeyes suffered an early 32-31 loss to the eventual No. 1-seeded Oregon Ducks that they were able to redeem on their playoff run, but a heart-wrenching loss to rival Michigan was a stain on Ohio State’s resume that had many fans calling for sweeping changes in the program going forward. As a result of the expanded 12-team playoff, however, the Buckeyes, who joined the 2008 LSU Tigers as the only two-loss teams since 1961 to be crowned national champions, were given life renewed, and they never looked back from their opportunity to make the most of what once looked like a lost season.

“I think this playoff system allowed our team to grow and learn and build,” Day said. “We built, and we responded to tough times. Man, isn’t that what life is all about?”

A players-only meeting that included Day had been held just three days after the loss to Michigan, and many players referenced the meeting throughout the postseason as the spark they needed to have the success they did.

“It was a chance for players to hash things out, where anyone that wanted to say something got to say what they wanted,” said Ohio State safety Lathan Ransom. “I mean, that said so much about Coach Day. I mean, being vulnerable, being able to hear what everyone has to say. Coach Day even took some critique from the players, I mean I think that shows how great of a leader he is. That’s why we got out there and we play so hard for him. …He always had our back, he’s out there being our guy, the face of our team, to take all that adversity, take everything. He’s our leader, and he’s gonna continue to be our leader.”

In the end, it was the Buckeyes, not the Irish – although situated just 207 miles northwest and possessing an equal breadth of historic achievement – who would once again inaugurate a new era of the college football postseason. This was an Ohio State team that had never truly left the nation’s elite in the decade since the Buckeyes last hoisted the trophy – as they have appeared in four of the last six College Football Playoffs and six overall – but one that found themselves on the center stage of the sport once again by redefining the identity of a champion.

“From the start of this thing, we’ve been knocking on the door, and I think about the ’19 team and the ’20 team and the ’21 team, the ’22 team,” Day said. “You keep going through these seasons and we weren’t that far off. But you’ve got to find a way to break through and make it to where we are now.”

More than anything else, it was Day’s love for his team that highlighted the dusk of a historic season in college football.

“The story gets to get told now,” he said. “It’s the reason you get into coaching, to see guys overcome things, learn life lessons, and then reach their dreams.”