We have reached the College Football Playoff semifinals, and unlike last season when the favorites won all eight games in the first two rounds, we’ve seen some surprises this year. Gone are the likes of Ohio State, Georgia and Alabama. In are the upstarts like Indiana, Ole Miss and a Miami team that hasn’t played on a stage like this in over 20 years.

Between those three and Oregon, we are guaranteed to not only have a new national champion but a team that will win its first title in the CFP era. Of our final four teams, Miami is the only program to win a national title going back to the BCS era — its last natty coming in 2001.

For Ole Miss, you have to go back to 1960, which is the lone national title in program history. Indiana and Oregon? They’ve never won the national title.

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NIL, the transfer portal and the College Football Playoff were supposed to bring us new blood, and it’s hard to argue with the results right now, isn’t it? So we’re either re-crowning a long-dormant national power or welcoming a new power to the fold, but I’m not here to figure out who will take the trophy at the end right now. No, the point of our exercise today is to determine what the best possible title game matchups would be. To figure that out, I looked at the possibilities from multiple perspectives. How competitive would the game likely be? How does the matchup look? Who has the coolest uniforms? And, while I’m not a television executive, I also considered which matchup would be most appealing to a broader audience.

Here are my highly scientific results.

1. (5) Oregon vs. (10) Miami

Oregon may not have a national title to its name, but it’s not exactly a stranger to the stage. This is Oregon’s third appearance in the CFP, and if it advances to the title game, it will be its second appearance in a national championship game since the start of the BCS era in 1998. Miami is the blue blood of the group. It has won a national title this century and has five in its history.

While neither team is a television draw the likes of Ohio State or Alabama, they are known commodities in the college football world and would draw more “casual” eyeballs in this spot than any other possible combination. As for the matchup itself, the teams are quite similar. They have physical run games that look to punish you for 60 minutes but also have accurate quarterbacks who can get the ball to dangerous playmakers at the wide receiver position.

They’re also both led by coaches who put a strong emphasis on building their program from the lines of scrimmage out, though Dan Lanning is more aggressive when it comes to gameday decisions than Mario Cristobal. Oh, and that brings up another fun storyline for this game. Mario Cristobal left Oregon to take the job at Miami and was replaced by Lanning. There was a lot of talk about the possibility of a Carson Beck vs. Georgia’s revenge game the last few weeks, but we all overlooked Mario vs. Oregon.

2. (1) Indiana vs. (10) Miami

A lot of what I said about the football matchup between Oregon and Miami applies here as well. Indiana may not have a bunch of blue-chip prospects on their offensive and defensive lines, but go ahead and ask all those blue-chip teams it’s beaten if they could tell the difference when facing them. The Hoosiers are just as mean as anybody, and I don’t know that there’s a defense in the country that takes as much joy in hitting ballcarriers as Indiana’s does.

Indiana also might have the best quarterback in the country. Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy for good reason and could be the first pick in the NFL Draft this spring. So that certainly brings some “sizzle” to the matchup for television purposes. Plus, you can always sell this as New Blood vs. Blue Blood.

3. (5) Oregon vs. (6) Ole Miss

Of the four possible matchups, this is the one most likely to deliver us a shootout. Ole Miss has been involved in plenty of those all year, thanks to the likes of Trinidad Chambliss and an explosive offense. Lane Kiffin might be gone (oh, the irony of leaving for LSU to compete for national championships while then watching the team you just left do that), but he didn’t take the offense with him. Ole Miss has scored 80 points through its first two playoff games after averaging 37.6 during the regular season.

Oregon has shown more versatility. It can win a rock fight, but it’s also one of the most explosive offenses in the country. It has scored 40 points or more seven times this season and has cracked the 50-point mark four times.

4. (1) Indiana vs. (6) Ole Miss

This is the matchup that would have the largest spread. I don’t know where the final odds would be by the time the game came around, but using my power ratings, I’d have Indiana as roughly a 10-point favorite here. Of course, if this game happens, Ole Miss will have reached the title game after beating both Georgia and Miami as underdogs in the quarters and semis, so it’s not a position where the Rebels would be afraid.

Still, while I’ll be happy to watch this game if it’s the one we get. The blowout potential here is higher than anywhere else, which makes it the least appealing. Yes, there’s the angle of neither team having won or competed for national titles in the modern era before, but like Indiana, Oregon hasn’t won a national title either, so the novelty doesn’t carry much weight.

Washington Huskies sophomore quarterback Demond Williams Jr. will begin his third season at the school among the top compensated players in college football after agreeing to a new deal on Friday.

ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel reported the deal between the 5-foot-11, 190-pound signal-caller and the school on Friday, reuniting Williams and Jedd Fisch for the next two seasons through his senior year in 2027.

The Chandler, Arizona native emerged as one of the best quarterbacks in the Big Ten in his first year as the Huskies’ starter, throwing for 3,064 yards and 25 touchdowns with an additional 611 yards rushing and six touchdowns on the ground in 2025, leading the program to a 9-4 overall record in year two under Fisch.

Missouri football does not appear to be wasting much time on the most important question on its roster.

Multiple reports landed Friday, Jan. 2, indicating that the Tigers are the team to watch for Austin Simmons, who, at the beginning of the 2025 season, was widely expected to be the starting quarterback for the Ole Miss Rebels under then-head coach Lane Kiffin.

Simmons, according to a report Friday from national ESPN reporter Pete Thamel, has entered the transfer portal with a no-contact tag. That typically means that a player has a good idea where they would like to end up, and it bars other schools from reaching out to him or his representatives.

We’ve known Leavitt was going to leave Arizona State for a couple weeks now after a social media post, but he’s officially in the portal as of this morning.

He played in seven games this season before suffering a foot injury that required him to have surgery and miss the remainder of the year. In those seven games, he threw for 1,628 yards and 10 TDs along with three interceptions. He also ran for 306 yards and five TDs. The previous season, he threw for 2,885 yards and 24 TDs with six interceptions while running for another five rushing TDs.

The former four-star prospect originally committed to Michigan State before transferring to ASU, where he’s been the last 2 years.

Auburn wide receiver Cam Coleman announced his intention to enter the transfer portal on Dec. 29, a move that assuredly had high-profile programs queuing up for his services.

Four days later, and a day until the transfer portal officially opens, an apparent leader for those services emerged: the Texas Longhorns.

The Houston Chronicle’s Kirk Bohls reported that Texas is saving NIL money in an effort to land Coleman in the portal – even though the star wideout’s asking price could be as high as $4 million.

Coleman is arguably the top overall player to announce plans to enter the transfer portal this offseason, having accounted for over 1,300 yards in 2 seasons at Auburn despite inconsistent quarterback play on the Plains.

According to Pro Football Focus, Coleman caught 57 of his 88 targets this season. His average depth of target was 13.4 yards, which was third among SEC receivers with at least 75 targets.

Adding Coleman to the Longhorns would be a major coup for an offense that ranked 45^th in the country both in passing yards (250.7) and scoring (30.5) in 2025. Arch Manning is set to return for his junior season after throwing for 3,163 yards and 26 touchdowns against seven interceptions.

An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.