Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Who needs tickets?
If it’s you, I hope you have deep pockets. Just getting into the big house in Atlanta will run you $4000 big ones, and that’s for a single upper deck seat. That’s about a dollar for every mile these jet setting college students have covered as they flew around the country playing this tourney. Gosh, I hope they’ve had some time to study! Actually, it seems they have, as OSU’s team grade point average is 3.3, which is exceptional considering the lives these student athletes lead. It’s good news for OSU head coach Ryan Day, who gets a cool half million for his team scoring above a 3.0 GPA. But I digress: if you want the best seats, you’re looking at close to $12k, which is a lot. If you’ve got the dosh, there’s still time! Or you can just follow along with us for the grand total of zero USD. It’s up to you!
We are live!
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff, national championship game: Notre Dame v Ohio State. Did I say that right? The branding is a bit complicated but that hasn’t stopped millions upon millions of football devouring Americans from watching these games in droves. This tournament, featuring some of the biggest collegiate programs in the nation, has been a complete commercial success, with those invested reaping the ratings and the rewards. It also must be the longest college football season ever, with both of these teams about to suit up for their 16th game, as the final continues to move farther and farther away from college football’s traditional New Year’s day sweetspot.
But never mind all that, we’ve got a ball game to play and for Notre Dame, it just doesn’t get any bigger. One of the most revered and historic football programs in the United States, the Fighting Irish were the very first program to get an “America’s Team” moniker, annoying just about everyone except Notre Dame fans. Even with all the glamor attached to the program, they haven’t won a national title since 1988, and that they’re in the final is something of a surprise, especially when you consider that they lost to Northern Illinois earlier in the season. Once upon a time, losing to a 28 point underdog, one who Notre Dame paid $1.4m just to come and play at South Bend, would have been a death sentence to national title aspirations. With 12 teams, rather than four now being invited to the playoffs, there’s now room for error. So the ensuing 13-game winning streak that these Irish ripped off earned them an invite, and then their stunning defeat of Penn State in the semifinals got them a spot in Atlanta for a shot at all the marbles.
As so often happens in college sports, with players coming and going more than ever, the head coach is the star. Marcus Freeman is just 39 years old, and one of only 16 black head coaches in the 134 teams known as the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. If he beats Ohio State he will become the first black head coach to win a national title:a significant milestone, and on Martin Luther King Day in the US no less. And if Notre Dame are to win, it’ll be their defense that makes the difference: the Irish have the no2 “D” in the nation.
Ohio State? Well, their defense is arguably even better than Notre Dame’s, which spells trouble for the banged up offensive line for the Irish. It’s one reason why the Buckeyes are favored to win this game by a healthy 8.5 points and to take their first national championship since 2014. Like Notre Dame, OSU also had their regular season pitfalls, suffering a shock defeat to their kryptonite, Michigan on the last regular season weekend of the season. The 21-point upset, at home, led to a players only meeting that galvanized the Buckeyes, who went on to score dominant wins over Oregon and Texas en route to the final in Atlanta.
The best player on the field tonight will wear red and white. Jeremiah Smith, the vaunted 19-year-old wide receiver punished defenses this season, slicing up the then-no1 ranked Oregon Ducks for nearly 190 yards and two touchdowns in the quarterfinal. Whether Notre Dame can slam the brakes on this future top-five NFL pick will have a lot to do with the ability of the Irish to hang close in this game.
So a big match-up? Absolutely: big enough to rival the inauguration of a United States President. So get your pom poms ready as we get set for the National Championship game. And if you get bored, X me or email me and I’ll make you famous!
Stand by for more coverage: stick with us!
David will be here shortly, here’s something from the AP on the significance of today’s game:
Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman felt more comfortable talking about the national championship his players have a chance to win Monday night than the history attached to it if they pull it off.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the connections between Freeman’s fate — he is trying to become the first African American coach to capture a college title at the highest level in America’s favorite sport — and all that’s happening in the U.S. on the day of the big game.
Monday 20 January is national-title day but also the day the United States celebrates Martin Luther King Jr., and inaugurates Donald Trump to his second term as president. King devoted his life to fighting for inclusion and equality, and today diversity initiatives are increasingly under scrutiny on college campuses.
“The timing of Marcus Freeman and Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a powerful symbol that should be viewed with cautious optimism,” said Joseph Cooper, the director of the Institute for Innovative Leadership in Sport at UMass. “And with the incoming administration and their professed commitment to undo DEI policies, it reflects the peril and the long journey we still have to go, beyond just breaking barriers with pioneers.”
That Freeman’s potential breakthrough comes more than 40 years after a Black basketball coach first did the same, and that it comes against a backdrop of a mediocre minority hiring record that has shadowed college sports for decades, is a sign of how far those sports still have to go.
“Today’s Black coach is the ‘70’s Black quarterback,” Rod Broadway, who coached at historically Black universities Grambling State and North Carolina A&T, said about the once-rare sight of an African American playing the sport’s most important position.
English (US)