IU‘s Kaelon Black rushed for 99 yards on 15 carries and scored a touchdown against Alabama in the Rose Bowl.

Texas Tech Tight End Terrance Carter Jr. struggled against Orgeon catching only one pass of 8 yards.

Offensive lineman Carter Smith (65) holds up Indiana’s first-ever Rose Bowl trophy.

It’s that time of the year when college and professional football dominate the sports landscape. Now the focus is on the NCAA Division I College Football Playoff Final Four. Following the controversy over the final selections to the 12-team field, the squads that made it to the postseason party put on a show.

The top-seeded Indiana Hoosiers lived up to their No. 1 regular-season national ranking, putting a woodshed beating on the No. 9 Alabama Crimson Tide, 38-3. The upset-minded fifth-ranked Oregon Ducks shut out fourth-ranked Texas Tech 23-0, setting up a rematch with the Hoosiers, who beat them 30-20 on October 11 in Eugene. The Ducks, since that loss, are 6-0 and had their first playoff shutout since 1917.

Their players talked about that loss being a motivational tool for the playoffs. Linebacker Bryce Boettcher said: “Obviously, we came off a big Penn State win and kind of thought we were pretty cool going into that week and pretty confident. We got a little lackadaisical with our prep.

“I think the rest of the season leading up to this point is a pretty good testament to the way we responded to that loss.”

The blowback from the Indiana/Alabama game is a call for Crimson Tide head coach Kalem DeBoar’s job. Many powerful Alabama alumni and boosters want him gone. He temporarily silenced his ever-growing audience of detractors when his squad rallied from a 17-0 deficit to beat eighth-seeded Oklahoma 34-24, advancing to the quarterfinals.

One of the jokes on the comedy circuit was that the state of Alabama would offer the lives of its unborn future generation to the state of Louisiana for the right to get Lane Kiffin out of his recently signed multiyear, multimillion dollar contract before he coaches one game at the school he dumped, the University of Mississippi, to run to.

It is well known that Kiffin coveted the Alabama Head coaching position and only took the LSU job. job as a pitstop until the ‘Bama job opened. And that may be in the very near future, possibly as soon as next year. If the “power players” in the Alabama football structure had their way, that move would have been made minutes after the end of the Indiana beatdown. The game averaged 23.9 million viewers, peaking at 25.6 million. This was the highest rating in the last two years of the College Football Playoffs.

With the Hoosiers and Ducks winning their games, the Big 10 will again have another team in the finals. The last two winners of the CFP have been Big 10 schools, with Michigan and Ohio State claiming the crown. The last time Indiana finished a football season unbeaten was in 1945, when it went 9-0-1.

Coach Cignetti spoke after the game, saying, “I thought our mindset was really good. I liked our prep, for the most part, once we knew who the opponent was.” He further stated, “I’m proud of our players, our coaches, and everyone. Again, a big win against a team that’s got great tradition like that and history, a lot of good players and a great head football coach.”

Indiana’s fortunes have increased for next year with the signing of Boston College sophomore running back Turbo Richard. The 5-foot-8, 207-pound back started 11 of the Eagles’ 12 games in 2025, leading the team with 749 yards rushing and nine touchdowns. The ‘Bama loss sets the stage for semifinal matchups between top-seeded Indiana and fifth-seeded Oregon, a rematch of the two titans who last played three months ago on the Ducks’ home turf.

The two other College Football Playoff games that produced somewhat surprising results were the 10th-ranked University of Miami Hurricanes bouncing second-seed OSU by a 24-14 final score. The defending national champion Buckeyes, one of the top seeds that received a first round bye in the CFP, waved bye-bye to their attempt at back-to-back national championships with their disappointing performance against the surging “Canes from The U.”

Fans of O-State will claim that the team’s 25-day layoff following their loss to Indiana in the Big 10 Conference title game led to their demise — a point that must be considered by the CFP selection committee in the future as higher seeds that receive byes have done poorly after layoffs while teams that play are sharper.

Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal spoke after the game about his players: “It starts and ends with these guys and their teammates. Their resiliency, their commitment to a program, and a level of work and dedication that is just rare.”

Another example of the layoff problem factored into the Mississippi upset of the Georgi Bulldogs 39-34 The Athens 11 were off for 25 days, causing serious concern not only for the Bulldogs but also for others. Kiry Smart, the Georgia coach, mentioned this before playing Ole Miss: “I think none of the teams with byes won, if that’s correct. So there’s a lot of thought there, a lot of texting going on between coaches who did it last year, trying to find maybe a better way.” One solution put forth is to eliminate bye weeks, making all teams play on the same schedule and giving the higher seeds home-field advantage. With the talk of a 16-team playoff next year, the bye system would not be needed.

The Miami Hurricanes, who are the 10th seed, will play the sixth-seeded Rebels, not exactly what was expected by the television networks that spent megamillions for broadcast rights. For true college football fans, though, the excitement of seeing talents like Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza (Indiana), Trinidad Chambliss (Ole Miss) and strong teams like Oregon and Miami compete against each other. Mississippi’s battle is more than enough to grab their attention and hold it.

If Indiana runs the table and finishes with a perfect 16-0 record, it will be a first in college football history. That alone is worth watching this college football playoff to its conclusion.