The stage is set for the 2025 College Football Playoff National Championship. No. 1 Indiana (15-0, 9-0) will face No. 10 Miami (13-2, 6-2) in Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida, on Jan. 19 (7:30 p.m. EST, ESPN).

The national championship matchup will feature a pair of programs that have not reached this level of success in quite some time. Indiana has never seen this amount of success, as it did not win more than 10 games in a regular season until Curt Cignetti’s arrival. As for Miami, 2025 has been about a return to national relevance that has been missing for nearly two decades.

Retired seven-time national champion head coach Nick Saban is buying into Miami’s return to national relevance. He discussed the importance Hurricanes’ run in the 2025 College Football Playoff at halftime of the Peach Bowl on the ESPN set Friday.

“I’m happy for them too. I think this is great for the city of Miami. The U is back, and that’s really, really good. Glad they’re going to be playing in Hard Rock (Stadium), that’s all great,” Saban said. “But, I tell you what, they helped Ole Miss a lot in the game last night. But what impressed me the most was the resiliency they showed to keep playing the next play and overcome the adversity that they created themselves.”

Saban has a professional connection with Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal. After Florida International fired Cristobal in the 2013 offseason, Saban hired him to his Alabama staff. Cristobal served as an associate head coach, recruiting coordinator and offensive line coach for four seasons before departing for Oregon in 2017.

Cristobal spent a season as the Ducks’ co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach before taking over for the outgoing Willie Taggart as head coach. He was in the role for four seasons before accepting the head coaching job at Miami.

Under Cristobal’s leadership, the Hurricanes are playing in their first national championship since 2002. Following the national championship loss to Ohio State and their eventual movement to the ACC, the Hurricanes gradually regressed to the point where they fired Larry Coker in the 2007 offseason.

Between Coker and Cristobal, the Hurricanes employed Randy Shannon, Al Golden, Mark Richt and Manny Diaz as head coaches. All four finished with winning records as head coaches, but only Richt won 10 games in a season (2017). Richt retired from the post after three seasons, while the other three were relieved of their duties by the university.

Indiana enters the College Football Playoff national championship game on January 19, riding one of the most improbable runs in modern college football.

The Hoosiers finished the regular season unbeaten, captured the Big Ten title, and earned the No. 1 seed in the expanded playoff before dismantling No. 9 Alabama (38–3) and No. 5 Oregon (56–22) in the first two rounds of the postseason.

Indiana’s dominant Peach Bowl victory over the Ducks cemented the Hoosiers’ place in the national title game, marking the program’s first appearance in a national championship and representing the pinnacle of head coach Curt Cignetti’s rapid rebuild.

At the center of Indiana’s historic 2025 campaign is quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the Cal transfer who arrived in Bloomington after spending his first two seasons with the Golden Bears.

In his lone season at Indiana, Mendoza has delivered elite efficiency and command of the offense, throwing for 3,349 yards with a nation-best 41 touchdowns against just six interceptions, while completing 73% of his passes across 15 games.

That breakout campaign helped guide Indiana to a 15–0 record, earning Mendoza widespread national recognition, becoming Indiana’s first Heisman Trophy winner, adding AP Player of the Year honors, and sweeping the major national quarterback awards.

With Mendoza widely expected to declare for the NFL Draft following the season, speculation has intensified regarding his draft position and potential landing spot.

ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. added fuel to that conversation on Monday by placing Mendoza No. 1 overall on his latest 2026 NFL Draft Big Board following the CFP semifinals.

“Mendoza transferred to Indiana after playing two seasons at Cal, and his game has taken off,” Kiper wrote. “The key? He has cut down on sacks, with 22 so far this season after taking 41 in 2024.”

“Mendoza is getting the ball out quicker. And while he doesn’t have a huge arm, he can make all the necessary NFL-level throws. His ball placement is fantastic. I wouldn’t consider him a dual threat, but Mendoza also has enough mobility to pick up first downs as a scrambler.”

Kiper’s Big Board places Mendoza ahead of other highly regarded quarterbacks expected to headline the 2026 NFL Draft class, including Oregon’s Dante Moore and Alabama’s Ty Simpson.

While those passers bring different physical profiles, Mendoza’s combination of efficiency, decision-making, and a proven winning resume has increasingly separated him from the pack in early evaluations.

He has also emerged as one of the sport’s most marketable stars, ranking eighth nationally in NIL valuation at an estimated $2.6 million, a figure that reflects both his on-field success and national profile.

Indiana’s season is not yet complete, as a national title win over Miami would cement the Hoosiers’ campaign as one of the most memorable in college football history and further strengthen Mendoza’s case as the top overall prospect.

Regardless of the outcome, his ascent from transfer addition to Heisman Trophy winner and projected No. 1 pick stands as one of the most notable quarterback rises in recent college football history.

The 2026 NFL Draft is scheduled for April 23–25 in Pittsburgh, but Mendoza’s trajectory suggests the conversation surrounding the first overall selection may already be taking shape.

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A college football champion will be crowned on Jan. 19 after the No. 10-seed Miami Hurricanes and No. 1-seed Indiana Hoosiers face off at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.

As many fans have noticed and have thoroughly enjoyed pointing out online, the SEC does not have a representative in the title game for the third consecutive year. Many in the sport have attributed this to NIL and the transfer portal, which allow non-traditional programs like Texas Tech or Indiana to contend, while programs like Georgia or Alabama no longer have significant talent advantages.

When it comes to the Bulldogs, Fox’s Joel Klatt revealed on a recent episode of “The Next Round” that Georgia can’t even say they have the best coach in college football anymore, going as far as to say that Indiana’s Curt Cignetti has surpassed him.

“It leads into this idea of Kirby (Smart) is the best coach in college football,” Klatt said in reference to the SEC being the best conference narrative. “Well no he’s not. He hasn’t even played in the final four in the last three years with good teams by the way. And in some cases based on the composite, the most talented team.

“So Curt Cignetti is doing more with less than anybody,” Klatt said. “And he’s doing it on a stage and at a pace right now that is fairly unprecedented. He did it at Indiana. Guys Indiana is likely to win the national championship. That blows my mind. It just does.”

While it seemed extremely brash or arrogant at the time when Cignetti told college football fans to Google him at his introductory press conference, that appears to have been a legitimate warning that no one was really ready for.

In his four years as an FBS head coach, which include his final two seasons at James Madison, Cignetti has compiled a 45-6 record. At Indiana alone, he has put together a record of 26-2, leading the Hoosiers to the program’s first outright Big Ten title since 1945, the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff and also helped Fernando Mendoza have a breakout year that saw him win the Heisman trophy.

Arguably the most interesting part about Cignetti’s success outside of his one-liners and otherworldly confidence is the fact that he isn’t chasing someone else’s legacy at another program, he is working to build his own.

Despite being the hottest coach on the market this coaching cycle, Cignetti inked an 8-year extension worth around $93 million that will keep him in Bloomington.

So, for those college football traditionalists who are struggling to accept the new reality of what this sport has become, it appears that accepting Indiana as a powerhouse is another thing they’ll have to add to the list.

Pat McAfee remains one of the more polarizing voices in the college football media landscape, and it appears the College GameDay personality is losing some of his base of support among fans, according to a new survey.

McAfee’s approval ratings among college football fans have fallen to an all-time low coming out of the 2025 season, according to a poll taken by The Athletic this week.

How do you feel about Pat McAfee?

Fans were asked a simple question: “How do you feel about Pat McAfee on College GameDay?” And the answers definitely tilted one way.

Nearly half of those who answered the question said they “Don’t like it,” with 49.5 percent of fans who took part saying they didn’t approve of McAfee’s contribution to the weekly College GameDay program.

That contribution has been noteworthy from the beginning, capped off by his bombastic (and often shirtless) game predictions that helped give the program a transition from Lee Corso’s famous headgear picks as a method of closing out each show on Saturday.

The field-goal kicking contest that McAfee hosts on GameDay, which includes him paying out serious money to the winners, is also highly-regarded among fans who watch.

Those who do like what McAfee brings to the table? That number is down to 31.6 percent of those who were surveyed by The Athletic.

Just under 20 percent of those asked, 18.9 percent, said they had no opinion of him.

Previous polls agree on McAfee

This marked the third year that The Athletic polled fans on McAfee, but this edition of the vote saw the highest mark among those who answered negatively about him.

Last year, 42.5 percent of respondents said they didn’t like McAfee, and in 2023, that number swelled to 48.9 percent.

Two seasons ago, the negative conversation around McAfee’s performance on College GameDay even resulted in viral speculation that he considered leaving the program.

Last offseason, it was revealed that McAfee did not have a contract to appear on College GameDay that fall and it was an open question for a time whether or not he would return.

Those rumors were put to bed about a month later, when McAfee revealed that he signed a new deal with ESPN to appear on the show that season.

College GameDay is still very popular

Whatever fans may think of McAfee, they are very clear on the College GameDay program overall: they love it.

The overwhelming majority of those fans polled, 83.6 percent of them, said they prefer College GameDay to the Fox pre-game program Big Noon Kickoff.

That confidence was expressed in the TV ratings this season, as College GameDay established viewership records in the 2025 season averaging 2.7 million viewers per show, up 22 percent from last year.

(Athletic)

Read more from College Football HQ

Is this the new normal? The new Bloomington? The new Big Ten?

Good afternoon, and happy Monday. Three-quarters of the MNW household are struggling with some form or residuals of the flu, and the other one is me. That, of course, has led to no resentment of the fact that I am healthy other than a little cough, no sir.

Indiana feels inevitable at this point, do they not? The Hoosiers have, through Curt Cignetti’s shrewd use of the transfer portal and quality coaching, turned college football completely on its ear.

Well, a deep-pocketed donor by any other name is…a deep-pocketed donor, still. Add to that Mark Cuban’s money for 2026? We might be dealing with the Hoosiers until Curt Cignetti gets bored.

Of course, there have been flashes in the pan before: the wisconsin Rose Bowls, the Peak Weather Machine years of Michigan State, that one time Minnesota won ten games or whatever—but it’s undeniable that none of those programs ever made a national championship and that none of them did it in the style that Indiana is doing it right now.

Watching Indiana do it—or, indeed, the entire SEC going belly-up in the postseason—is certainly cathartic. It’s better than the usual suspects doing it over and over again, and it’s at least more above-board than the standard SEC model of used car dealers buying themselves a championship. I take little solace in knowing that there’s less program-building, less connection to a campus, less-anything that feels “authentically” college football, but it’s incredibly possible that my feelings of “authenticity” always relied on a lie—the lie that it was possible to square “belonging” or “identity” of a college campus with athletes being fairly treated.

Congratulations, of course, to Indiana on their seemingly inevitable championship. It is truly exciting for the Hoosiers and their fans, as well as those coming back to football to join the thousand or so of their long-suffering brethren. Glad you’ve finally left the tailgate lots and headed in. Enjoy Miami.

Of course, you might have questions or comments about completely different things—basketball, wrestling, the best episode of Magic School Bus, the worst way to cook cod. We in the OTE Hive were recently discussing our careers as Quiz Bowl contestants (MNW, AlmaOtter, LPW), speech wannabes (LPW, Kind of…, Dead Read), or speech titans (BRT, Jesse, et al). Ask us what you’d like, and we’ll answer how we’d like.

This is a Mailbag call, and I hope you’ll treat it as such.

Elite running back Hollywood Smothers flipped from Alabama to Texas in the 2026 college football transfer portal on Sunday, signaling deeper issues within the Crimson Tide program.

On the field, Alabama has fallen short of sustaining the elite standard set by Nick Saban, losing as many games in two seasons under Kalen DeBoer (eight) as it did across the previous five seasons under the seven-time national championship-winning coach.

Coaching deserves its fair share of blame for Alabama’s slight fall from grace, but deeper issues may lie within the Crimson Tide’s NIL operation, which has lagged behind many of its peers this cycle.

Alabama has lost six players ranked inside Cooper Petagna‘s top 100 of the college football transfer portal rankings this offseason, while adding just one: defensive lineman Devan Thompkins.

National college football and transfer portal analyst Chris Hummer went inside Alabama’s NIL struggles, offering insights into what’s gone wrong in Tuscaloosa and what the future may hold for one of college football’s most storied programs.

“A decade ago, Alabama could land everyone they wanted,” Hummer said on CBS Sports HQ. “They could be like a dragon sitting on a chest of gold. There’s nothing you could do about it.