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You could call tomorrow’s Rose Bowl the fifth and final chapter of the ongoing Big Ten championship. With schedules as imbalanced as they were, the league took a circuitous route to deciding its de facto champ. They played Ohio State vs. Oregon 1.0 in Eugene, and when that settled very little, they then played Ohio State vs. Penn State in State College, followed by Ohio State vs. Indiana in Columbus, just to make sure the Ducks and the Bucks were the two best teams in the league. We thought we’d get a rematch in Indianapolis, but there’s an addendum to Newton’s Laws right now which says, “Even if Ohio State’s the best team in the Big Ten, Ohio State cannot beat Michigan,” so instead we got a weird Oregon vs. Penn State matchup which simply confirmed that Penn State was the conference’s third chair. Now, we finally get Ohio State vs. Oregon 2.0. It’s happening on a truly neutral field, and there’s a decent chance it’ll decide the national championship. Whether you think it does or it doesn’t probably depends on what you think about the SEC. We’ll get to SEC uncertainty later.
These are, on paper, the two best teams in the country. Movelor, our model’s power rating system, ranks Oregon first and Ohio State second. ESPN’s SP+, a slightly more accurate projector of final margins, grades Ohio State ahead. ESPN’s FPI, the most accurate of the three this year, has Texas first, then Ohio State, then Oregon all the way down at sixth. If you aggregate the three, you get Ohio State first, then Oregon, then the rest of the country. This happens if you cast a wider net as well, as long as you aren’t trying to get too selective. FPI, for those curious, is going more off of yards per play than the others, and in yards per play, Oregon’s defense is on the weaker side of the six title contenders. Movelor is based on final scores, where Oregon has done more than enough, mostly by winning all their games. SP+ largely revolves around a metric called success rate, and while it also questions Oregon’s defense, its questioning of Texas’s offense is enough to keep the Ducks in the top two.
Betting markets seem to agree with our little aggregation, at least as far as this specific game goes. They’re a little higher on Ohio State than even the aggregate, but the markets and the ratings are, in effect, less than a point apart. The assumption nationally seems to be that Ohio State is the slightly better team. This assumption is fair. In their one head-to-head meeting, Ohio State moved the ball comparably to their hosts, with their two turnovers (to Oregon’s zero) still leaving them in a position where they could have won the game. Had Will Howard and Ryan Day’s shortcomings not collided to form the perfect storm at a disastrous time, Ohio State might have won the Big Ten in the official sense, loss to Michigan and all. What about the other twelve games each has played? If you take Michigan out of the sample, Ohio State played better than Oregon this year. If you leave Michigan in, Ohio State didn’t.
Is Ohio State the team who lost to Michigan? Yes. That was them. No bodies were switched in the making of that debacle. But is Ohio State the team who lost to Michigan? Kind of. If their approaches to and composure during games against Tennessee, Penn State, and Indiana are a good indication, it’s not good teams who give the Buckeyes problems. It’s just Michigan. If you include the ending to that Oregon game, though, the ending where Ryan Day got predictably outfoxed and Will Howard got predictably foolish under the pressure of a defining opportunity, it might be good teams who give the Buckeyes problems. Or at least, it might be big moments. The thing we should take away from Ryan Day’s infamous Lou Holtz line last year in South Bend is not that Ryan Day uses every slight as motivation. It’s that Ryan Day is so aware of his critics that they are whom he thinks of as the clock winds down on season-changing football games.
To rehash Ohio State vs. Oregon 1.0 for a minute—or rather, to rehash how that fits into each of these seasons: The narrative is that Ohio State was a little better that day, and that because the game was in Eugene, they weren’t better by enough to win. The narrative then implies that neither team has changed all that much over the nearly three months since. This is where the narrative gets a little funky. Oregon entered that first meeting playing well, but they were hardly a month removed from a messy two-week season-opening stretch, the one that featured terrible offensive line play and weak defensive showings and became the crux of Ashton Jeanty’s Heisman campaign. Since that first meeting, Oregon has won five of its seven games by at least three touchdowns, including a businesslike Big House demolition of the same Michigan team who’d plant their flag in Columbus at the end of the same month. Ohio State? Yes, they bullied Indiana and Tennessee, but they struggled against Nebraska, played a closer game than Oregon did against Penn State, lost to Michigan, and saw two offensive lineman hit the deck. Ohio State absolutely dominated Tennessee. But how good was Tennessee?
The Buckeyes are the more talented, more athletic team here. They have more depth than Oregon, something which combines with their program’s recent stature to give reason to believe they’re built more for December and January than is true of their counterparts. The fundamentals favor Ohio State. But Oregon has the trustworthy quarterback. Oregon has a head coach who, though Michael Penix admittedly put him in a blender last year, doesn’t suffer an established history of nincompoopery under duress. Oregon is the undefeated team entering this game, the number one team in the country. If the Ducks were favored, we’d probably be telling you to watch out for Ohio State. Since they’re not, we can instead ask if everyone is taking Oregon lightly.
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Is Ohio State vs. Oregon 2.0 the national championship or not? We promised some SEC talk. Let’s dive in, first with the Sugar Bowl between Georgia and Notre Dame.
I’ve half a mind to think that if Texas covers the spread against Arizona State, Georgia will beat Notre Dame, and that if Texas doesn’t, Notre Dame will win. That’s not how the world works (not least because Arizona State and Notre Dame aren’t linked at all), but there’s truth to the notion that for most of the season, conferences exist in isolation, and it’s fair to ask whether ratings systems like those we cited above experience some conference-by-conference drift. In a sport where roughly three quarters of games come against league opponents and those games are heavily backloaded, it’s easy to underrate or overrate one whole conference, as a whole.
That said, Ohio State did blow the pants off of Tennessee, which should qualm at least some doubts regarding what the numbers are saying. (To recap a common theme this year: The numbers say the SEC is the best conference, but that the Big Ten has the best top teams.) Tennessee was not Georgia or Texas. But Tennessee was a respectable team in this season’s Southeastern Conference, and Ohio State treated them like tissue paper.
So while yes, it’s possible that we’re undervaluing the SEC, it’s also possible that what the SEC has in torturous depth, it lacks in elite front line performance. In a Big Ten/SEC challenge, played top to bottom, smart money would back the Southerners. But in a 3-on-3 or 4-on-4 showdown, the Big Ten’s best versus the SEC’s? Georgia and Texas haven’t operated on the same plane as Ohio State and Oregon. They’re closer to Penn State, on paper.
Still, there’s that wrinkle we talked about above, that wrinkle which led us to say the fundamentals favor Ohio State against Oregon. Georgia and Texas both have a lot more talent and a lot more depth than Oregon, Penn State, and Notre Dame. That alone gives these teams an advantage as casualties rise and the end of the war draws near. With Georgia specifically, there’s the added benefit of experience facing this sort of gauntlet. Georgia has played multiple playoff games before. Georgia has seen what works and what doesn’t when it comes to preparing college-aged bodies to peak in December. Staffers for Oregon and the others have seen it as well, but they don’t have the first-hand failures and successes which are so natural to the Dawgs.
Not only, then, do we have reason to believe Georgia and Texas haven’t hit their ceilings while the other guys have. We also have reason to believe that Georgia, in particular, might be prepared for better football than what we’ve seen these last four months.
To go back to casualties:
Is it worse to lose your starting quarterback or your defensive tackle?
It’s a little stupid to think Georgia’s better without Carson Beck. But it’s not that stupid. Beck was bad against Texas in Austin. Beck was bad against Alabama in the first half in Tuscaloosa. Beck was bad against Mississippi in Oxford. The excuse for Georgia’s inconsistency is that they’ve shown up when it matters, which has always been a little silly (if that was true, Alabama wouldn’t own them) but is especially silly as it pertains to Beck. Maybe Georgia really does play to its level of competition. Beck? This year, he did the opposite.
Gunner Stockton was a good–not–great recruit, and if this was Week 1, we’d be viewing him that way. We’d say, “Georgia doesn’t have a first round draft pick at quarterback, but he’s a gamer,” and then he’d get the same kind of scouting report Mac Jones used to get, but with more respect for the physical tools. Instead, he’s either a budding folk hero or Georgia’s biggest vulnerability. Either he’s the galvanizing force breathing life back into these Dawgs, or he’s inept and needs to be protected. He is not a binary player, but he’s in a trinary situation. Either he succeeds, Georgia succeeds despite him, or he fails.
With Rylie Mills missing for Notre Dame, the great Irish fear is Georgia running up the middle all day. Looking at the numbers, this fear seems a bit overwrought. Georgia’s yards per rush came in fifth-worst this year among SEC teams. Some of that is facing great defensive lines, and some is the games where they missed Tate Ratledge, but Georgia’s yards per rush were the fifth-worst this year among SEC teams. Don’t get me wrong: They’re capable of a good running game. But what Notre Dame should maybe be more worried about, regarding Mills’s absence, is what that absence does to the Irish’s ability to get pressure on an inexperienced quarterback. Gunner Stockton is making his first career start in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal against another of the six national championship contenders. He’s doing it against a lockdown freshman cornerback (Leonard Moore) and one of the most lethal safeties in the sport (Xavier Watts). With time in the pocket, Stockton might be able to pick on Christian Gray. Without time in the pocket, that would hardly be a concern for Al Golden’s gameplan. Mills’s absence pulls Watts and Adon Shuler away from the box. That alone opens up some run game, and tougher challenges on Moore’s side of the field.
But again.
Georgia’s missing its starting quarterback.
I don’t think Notre Dame needs to worry about being run off the field. They might break down as the game goes on, losing a war of attrition and yielding some long, clock-eating drives, but I don’t think we’re going to see Georgia rush for two hundred yards. The bigger risk for Notre Dame is running into a Georgia defense that’s the most talented in the country and seeing that defense finally show up.
If the NFL had a lottery, it’s possible there’d be three lottery picks this year within Georgia’s starting eleven. Between Mykel Williams, Jalon Walker, and Malaki Starks, Georgia’s defense is loaded with blue-chip football players, and the second tier—a group led by Nazir Stackhouse up the middle—is far from bad. Still, Georgia’s defense has underwhelmed this season. SP+ ranks it only tenth-best in the country, sixth among those still in the playoff. We watched Jalen Milroe obliterate it. We watched Haynes King give it hell. Riley Leonard doesn’t have Milroe’s receivers, but he’s got a better line to run behind than King did.
Georgia can win with an imperfect game. It’s won with imperfect games ten different times this year. Notre Dame can’t. Notre Dame’s backs need to protect the ball. Riley Leonard needs to make the right choice 95% of the time. The 5% of the time when he doesn’t, he needs to get lucky, the way he did get lucky with bad throws in College Station and did not get lucky with that opening-drive swatted pass which turned into an interception against Indiana.
The numbers and the logic accompanying them say Notre Dame should win this. Notre Dame has played better football this year than Georgia, and rating systems which disagree only disagree narrowly. Bettors are focused on Georgia’s potential, and they’re focused on how hard it is to see Notre Dame playing better than it’s played, even as Notre Dame’s gone 10–2–1 against the spread this year (8–0 since the end of September). Those foci are valid. Georgia could be really, really good, and there’s a lot of season left. But so far this season, Notre Dame has been the better team. They’ve played nearly perfectly of late. They’ll need to do it again tomorrow night, and they’ll need to hope Kirby Smart’s playoff experience doesn’t empower Georgia to do the same.
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Moving to the B-Games:
Arizona State is a classic underdog. Plucky. Unheralded. Full of momentum and loaded with characters. Led by a player whose name is constantly mispronounced. (Skatt-uh-BOO! Like a ghost.) Arizona State came out of nowhere to make this playoff. Play like the kind of team who did that, and they’ll have a chance against Texas, even if they’ll open up the door to an ugly final score. Try to straight-up outplay Texas, and it’s probably not going to work.
Texas’s offense hasn’t consistently clicked since the Red River Shootout. There are a few grains of sand in the gears. But ASU’s defense isn’t all that special, and Texas’s recent commitment to the run game should work as long as its backs hold onto the ball. If you want an example of what elite depth can do: Texas tackle Cameron Williams might be a first round pick. He might miss this game, but given the job redshirt freshman Trevor Goosby did against Georgia, filling in for Kelvin Banks, the Longhorns seem unconcerned.
Across the line of scrimmage: Texas’s defensive front is nasty, and Sam Leavitt is not Cade Klubnik, even if he would probably take that to mean the exact opposite of what is true. Malik Muhammad would have to play a lot worse than he played against Clemson for Leavitt to be able to pick on him the way Klubnik did. It’s hard to see an angle here for ASU unless, again, they play their perfect game and do the underdog things, things like going for it on fourth down in situations where they normally would not.
Having said all that, betting markets might be overestimating the degree of one-sided football we should expect. Texas is better, but this is A-grade versus B-grade, not A-grade versus C-grade. Like Notre Dame, bettors have habitually underestimated Arizona State this year. That doesn’t have any predictive power in the grand scope—on average, undervalued teams don’t statistically stay undervalued—but market corrections are imperfect. That average comes from a host of overcorrections, undercorrections, and properly calibrated reactions. We don’t know which we’re seeing with the market and these Sun Devils.
Ultimately, Kenny Dillingham probably faces the same choice Curt Cignetti faced against Notre Dame in the opening round: Do you play to keep it respectable? Or do you play to win the game?
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Boise State is also a classic underdog, but they don’t occupy that archetype this season the same way Arizona State does. Arizona State’s 2024 was a couple months of fits and starts followed by an improbable ascent, one which ended with Dillingham’s horde ransacking the Big 12, making it look like it had been inevitable all along. Boise State’s season was one exciting night against Oregon which went down as the best loss in the country in the committee’s eye. Then, business as should have been expected within the Mountain West.
We wrote two months ago, slightly before paternity leave, about how good Boise State was in 2010 (the year they lost to Colin Kaepernick). We also wrote how they were not as good in 2006 (the year they beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl). This team is more like 2006’s than 2010’s. They’re good, and they’re great for a mid-major, but they’re not on the same level as Penn State. The fact the opponent is Penn State, the prototype for a modern college football bridesmaid, probably obscures this even further. It is very easy to underestimate Penn State.
In a weird way, it matters whether Boise State recognizes all of this. Like Dillingham tomorrow against Texas, Spencer Danielson faces a decision tonight against the Nittany Lions: Does he try to keep things respectable, playing as though he can beat Penn State by out-gaining them? Or does he try to win the game, trying to force turnovers and trying to force sacks and letting Ashton Jeanty throw the ball once or twice? There’s a lot to be said for confidence. There’s also a lot to be said for going on it on every fourth down and reaching into the trick play bag and acknowledging internally that while Jeanty is a stud, and while Boise State’s offensive line is terrifically under-appreciated (because Jeanty is such a stud), Penn State will out-body these Broncos if these Broncos give them the chance.
Yes, Boise State played Oregon to the wire on September 7th. A week earlier, Idaho gave Oregon a tricky time.
What about James Franklin? What about him. Sure, he hasn’t beaten Ohio State in a long time. But Boise State is not Ohio State. James Franklin’s Penn State has beaten plenty of teams of Boise State’s caliber. Maybe they haven’t had Boise State’s confidence—that’s where this comes back around to “how good does Boise State think they are”—but Penn State knows its way around fringe top-25 teams.
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In the way of predictions, a few offerings:
- I expect Penn State to win by two or more touchdowns tonight.
- I do think Texas and Georgia’s results are correlated, even if it’s only a slight correlation. I’d guess that either both cover the spread or both fail to cover the spread, and if I had to pick, I’d guess that they’ll both fail to cover, with Texas beating Arizona State by nine or ten while Notre Dame upsets Georgia outright.
- I think Ohio State vs. Oregon 2.0 will be a lot of fun, and I’d guess Oregon wins. But again, that one really seems like a coin toss, so if markets dramatically shift for some immaterial reason, let the record show that I will start telling everyone the opposite of what I’ve just said.
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