Indiana. Oregon. Miami. Ole Miss.

This isn’t what we expected, but it makes sense if you squint hard enough. There’s the juggernaut B1G team that has barely trailed all year, the team that played that same role last year and only lost one game this year to the juggernaut, the returning power built along the lines that has a $4 million quarterback in the break in case of emergency case, and the upstart SEC team with an electric offense and something to prove.

The names are a little different than usual – of this group, only Miami has won a national title of any kind since the sport became fully integrated – but the roles aren’t all that different from what you would draw up.

NIL and the portal have brought plenty of change to the sport in a short amount of time. Not all of it has been good, but this group of semifinal programs proves that it can be a lot of fun.

Cotton Bowl: No. 10 Miami 24, No. 2 Ohio State 14

This is it, what those of us who want to see The U return as a powerhouse program have been hoping for since Mario Cristobal arrived in Coral Gables. Miami, which barely made the playoff field after looking like the biggest challenger to Ohio State’s throne early in the year, just bullied the hell out of the most talented team in college football.

A scoreless first quarter set the tone that Miami’s defense would dictate the flow of the game, and the moment of the night came when Rueben Bain effectively blew up an Ohio State RPO so quickly that Julian Sayin never saw Keionte Scott perfectly break on the screen.

Watching the SkyCam view, it’s clear how much Ohio State’s (frankly, very odd) decision to use a silent count in a neutral site game might have contributed to the Hurricanes’ blistering pass rush. You can see Bain clock the trigger to snap (the left guard physically tapping the center) and perfectly time the play. Scott made a remarkable read to jump so early on the ball, but Bain’s pressure kept Sayin from seeing the break and bailing on the throw. 

The play was emblematic of the ways the Buckeyes, over and over again, let Miami push them around physically and on the chalkboard. You’ll note that in that play, Jeremiah Smith is lined up on the line of scrimmage and covered up by the outside receiver, and therefore ineligible to catch a pass. That’s such an unforced error, letting Miami ignore the best receiver in college football.

On that play, and for most of the 60 minutes, it felt like a lot of concerns everyone brushed over because it’s Ohio State came to bear in full force. The Buckeyes never really figured out how to kick into fifth gear all season, and didn’t have to because the schedule was mostly comprised of playing Purdue and Northwestern nine times. 

Freshman quarterback Julian Sayin looked insanely impressive in the regular season when his receiver room of central casting Monstars were wide open 25 times a game, but he struggled to be a difference maker in the biggest games of the year. Ryan Day, originally brought to Columbus to add a dynamic passing attack to Urban Meyer’s run-heavy spread, never materialized a creative enough gameplan – or even the uncreative gameplan everyone pined for, just throwing the ball to Jeremiah Smith no matter the coverage – to capitalize on the talent advantage he had in every single matchup.

The story turned out to be the reemergence of Miami, built in the exact mold Cristobal wants, but we can’t ignore how big of a missed opportunity this might turn out to be for the Buckeyes.

Orange Bowl: No. 5 Oregon 23, No. 4 Texas Tech 0

Texas Tech’s defense went out on its shield, only allowing 3.8 yards per play to a dynamic Oregon offense. I’m not sure what else David Bailey and co. could have done to keep this one in reach for as long as they did.

At 6-0 early in the second half, Oregon finally blew the game open when Matayo Uiagalelei bent around the edge to strip sack Tch quarterback Behren Morton and give the Oregon offense the ball inside Tech’s 10 yard-line. At that point, with the Red Raider unable to conjure up anything resembling an effective offense, the game was over.

Oregon benefitted from a little bit of luck, recovering the ball all five times it hit the ground – three from the Ducks, two from the Red Raiders – but there was no mistake who the better team was. Texas Tech spent a lot of money assembling a dynamite roster, they just ran into another team that spent a lot of money assembling a dynamite roster that included a quarterback and wide receivers.

Rose Bowl: No. 1 Indiana 38, No. 9 Alabama 3

Take the team names off the scoreboard and this game went exactly the way it was supposed to. The consensus best team in the country, which has dominated everyone all year, thoroughly outplayed a three-loss team that couldn’t run the ball and barely made the playoff field in every aspect of the game.

That still feels incredibly strange when we’re talking about Indiana and Alabama in these respective roles, but this might just be what the future of college football is.

Sugar Bowl: No. 6 Ole Miss 39, No. 3 Georgia 34

Even before you get to the narratives surrounding the teams, this was an instant classic, and maybe the best game of the 12-team playoff era so far. Just take a look at this win probability chart, helpfully annotated by ESPN’s Bill Connelly:

After a slow offensive start for both teams, Georgia jumped on the Rebels with a 21-6 run in the second quarter punctuated by Daylen Everette’s fumble recovery for a touchdown to put the Dawgs up 21-12. Ole Miss absolutely bungled the end-of-half drive – with ESPN’s Sean McDonough helpfully looking directly into the camera and saying “Joe Judge is completely responsible for game management decisions at Ole Miss” – to deny kicker Lucas Carneiro an opportunity to set his third career-long kick in the game.

At that point, it felt like Georgia might completely run away with the game. The Rebels looked overmatched on the line and Mike Bobo kept the gameplan balanced enough to prevent Pete Golding’s defense from keying in on anything.

And then, the thing that everyone makes fun of Georgia for doing happened. The gameplan got too conservative, Ole Miss forced field goals and punts when a touchdown might have put the game away, and the Rebels went into the fourth quarter trailing by just five.

That’s when the fireworks really started, as Trinidad Chambliss cemented his college football legend by going super-saiyan on a 44-yard bomb to Trey Wallace before an ill-advised fourth down attempt (Kirby later said that the ball never should have been snapped) gave the Rebels the ball back and they immediately converted to take a 10-point lead.

Georgia responded, with the sudden pressure forcing the offense into a rhythm it had lost since building the lead, and quickly scored before forcing an Ole Miss punt. This is where it again felt like the stars had aligned for a Georgia win, as the Dawgs marched down the field and converted one long third down after another.

And then the complacency, again. With 1st and goal from the 8 yard-line and just over a minute remaining, Georgia had two options – go for the touchdown on three straight plays and leave Ole Miss some time to attempt a comeback, or play conservatively and bleed the clock before kicking a field goal to go to overtime. They didn’t really do either, as Ole Miss used its two remaining timeouts following blasé run calls and then giving Stockton essentially a one-read third down attempt to the back of the endzone that again stopped the clock. A simple Peyton Woodring kick later and the Dawgs had tied the game but only taken another 12 seconds off the clock.

Chambliss made another of his approximately 14 miraculous plays to set up the winning kick, as his floated 40-yard bomb on 3rd and 5 to De'Zhaun Stribling caught a Georgia defense in press coverage completely off guard – an aside, I don’t think this was a massive mistake by Glenn Schumann and the UGA staff, they were trying to force the ball out quickly and maybe get their own offense another shot at a winning field goal with an incompletion, Chambliss just made a perfect throw – but the foundation was laid by conservative management on the previous drive. Once the Rebels got the ball back with time to get down the field and a hot kicker, everyone in the building knew how this would end.

I really do love Ole Miss embracing the powder blue color that adorned their helmets from 1948-77 and 1983-94. Bringing those helmets back as a way to honor Chucky Mullins was a genuinely cool thing, and the expansion of the set into home and away uniforms is distinctive.

I don’t love the all-white set with powder blue trim as much as the home jerseys (some of that is because my brain is stuck in 2006, and Ole Miss always wore grey pants with the white jerseys back then), and I’m really not sure about them with these co-branded Realtree camo helmets. It’s a good uniform set in a vacuum, to be clear, but it’s managed to take a uniquely Ole Miss thing and make the team look more like a (good-looking) Sun Belt squad. 

A smaller aside, but I feel similarly about Miami’s all-white road set they wore against Ohio State. I’d much rather see the Canes in green pants or orange pants more reminiscent of teams from the heyday of The U. 

Maybe I just don’t like all-white uniform sets from teams that haven’t traditionally utilized that look. I suppose your mileage will vary.

Kirby Smart’s 4th down decision-making got plenty of attention later in the game, but this fake punt was executed to absolute perfection and came at a time when a touchdown could have really opened up the doors for the Dawgs to bleed the clock out. Instead, they were held to a field goal, and then everything else happened.

🏆 Semifinal previews

🧢 Coach carousel grades, now that it’s (probably) finished spinning

📢 Final SEC Power Rankings