On3's Brett McMurphy projects Notre Dame as the top overall seed in the CFP
The Irish are now able to qualify for one of the four first-round byes, and McMurphy believes that they'll take full advantage of the new seeding rules. In his projection, Notre Dame would face the winner of the first-round matchup between LSU and Oregon, the No. 8 & 9 seeds. It would be great to stick it to Brian Kelly, but he doesn't have it playing out that way, as the Irish would take on the Ducks in the quarterfinals.
McMurphy has Notre Dame winning that game, setting up its fourth-straight season playing Ohio State. Unfortunately, the projection has this hypothetical game playing out like the last three, with the Irish on the losing end of it.
He doesn't have the Buckeyes winning back-to-back titles however, as McMurphy has the Georgia Bulldogs winning it all. While this would still be a great season for Notre Dame if it plays out this way, the championship drought would continue to rear its ugly head.
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USA Today
43 minutes ago
- USA Today
Ohio State safety Caleb Downs discusses difference between Ryan Day and Nick Saban
There aren't too many players out there who can say they played for two of the most successful college football coaches over the last couple of decades. However, Ohio State safety Caleb Downs is one of them. Downs chose to commit to Alabama over Ohio State when he came out of high school and spent his first college season becoming a Freshman All-American in Tuscaloosa under Nick Saban. But then, after that year, arguably the greatest coach in college football history retired, and Downs entered the transfer portal, eventually landing in Columbus to play for Ryan Day. At that point, Day had one whale of a winning percentage, but had yet to hoist the College Football Playoff national championship trophy had been so close to winning in previous seasons. But that was taken care of last year after Ohio State went on the greatest postseason run in college football history by beating several top ten teams en route to the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. Downs is now back for another year under Day and should have another fantastic season before heading off to the NFL. His first two years have provided Downs with a perspective on the differences between two national championship-winning coaches that he was happy to share with DJ Siddiqi of RG. When asked about Saban, Downs clearly still has respect and admiration for him. He was happy to share his perspective with RG. "He (Saban) was the most consistent person that I've ever met," says Downs of Saban in a one-on-one interview with RG. "He was the same person every day, and that's something that I acknowledged, and I learned from him. Just watching how he operated is a key piece to success. Just making sure every day, you put your best foot forward and you go in with the intention to be the best, and with the mindset 'I'm going to do everything the right way so I can be in the best position.'" One might wonder what made Downs decide to transfer to Ohio State. According to him, it came down to a path he wanted to blaze and the people he wanted to do it with when Saban rode off into the sunset. "I wanted to be a part of a culture and people that are like-minded to me, and they had a lot of great people that I knew from recruitment," Downs told RG. "They had a couple of players that I knew, a lot of coaches that I knew. I knew it was a good situation coming into and then I knew that they had a lot of returning players and a lot of hungry guys that were eager to win. I knew we would have at least a chance to go do something special, which we did." Once Downs got to Ohio State, the defense continued to get better and better with him as the focal point, so much so that the Buckeyes finished as the No. 1 defensive unit in several categories during the 2024 season. Ohio State had a good defensive coordinator with Jim Knowles calling the shots, but it was Day that he gained respect and admiration for, just like Saban, but for different reasons. Asked what makes Day tick by RG, Downs points to how he treats people. "Just caring about your players and knowing them intimately, caring about them off the field is something that I've learned from him," said Downs. "It's not always do this, do that. It's, 'Hey, can I get your guys' opinion on this? How can we grow better together?' That type of vibe, and I feel like that's a special thing as a coach, not always being like, 'I have to be the one that does everything.' To be able to say, 'Hey, my players may have some input, and I'm going to take the input and see what we can do it.'" To Downs, playing for two superpowers in college football wasn't about expectations being different, but the means to the end and how both head coaches did things. Not that one was better than the other, but just how they both went about reaching similar goals. "I would say the two biggest differences for me is just the way that the coaches run the program," said Downs. "It's just a different philosophy. The standard is the same and the expectation is the same — that you win every game and that you go out and dominate every play. But the means of how you do it is different, so I would say that's the biggest thing. The differences is how the head man wants to run the program." Downs will start his third season in college football when he begins his second season under Day on August 30 vs. Texas. It should be another great one for the player considered to be the best defender in college football. Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on X.
Fox Sports
an hour ago
- Fox Sports
Who Really Runs the Big Ten: Ohio State or Michigan?
Ohio State runs the Big Ten — or does it? The Buckeyes want to be heard on this point: They're defending nothing. They're chasing everything. And everything better mean Michigan. It's a sentiment that most competitors would embrace. Enter the silo. Silence the outside. Secure and protect focus on what's to come, not what has come to pass. However, that's not what we do with defending national champions, especially when they've not beaten their arch nemesis since 2019 and haven't won the league championship in a conference they claim to rule since 2020. Not only has Michigan — Ohio State's enemy now and forever — won three of the last four Big Ten titles and claimed the 2023 national title, but the Wolverines have watched an entire class of Buckeyes go winless against a program they refer to as "That Team Up North." The best tact, the best take, in any conversation where points must be made, is sharpening the truth into an iron point, especially when sliced at a rival. And that is what Michigan defensive end Derrick Moore did on Thursday when asked what he thought about Ohio State winning its most recent national title. "First, I'd like to congratulate them on the win," Moore said. "But you know it's not a real win if y'all [Ohio State] ain't beat us. Moore went on to elaborate on his statement, noting the first-year 12-team College Football Playoff and where the Buckeyes would have ended up had it not been for the expanded field. "If the playoff expansion wasn't around, they wouldn't have won the national championship. So we pretty much look at it like, y'all had a nice little, easy run. But we helped y'all along the way. We pretty much helped y'all build back up. But after that, they dominated everybody that came in front of them, so, I've got to give all the credit to them." Ahem: Where's the lie? Ohio State, being the No. 8 seed, would likely have been left out of a four-team playoff. And that loss to an unranked seven-win Michigan team would've slammed the door on a conversation to get the Buckeyes in among most rational fans and, more importantly, a rational selection committee. Remember this: Michigan ran the table in 2023. The Wolverines ran through Ohio State without their head coach on the sideline, right through their competition in the Big Ten title game and over Nick Saban's Alabama team and Kalen DeBoer's Washington team to win the title. If not all national champions are alike, 2023 Michigan looks a lot like 2018 Clemson and 2024 Ohio State looks a lot like 2007 LSU. It's one thing to win the national title. It's another for Ohio State or Michigan to beat the other, and that is by design. For so long, we've lived for rivalry games because it wasn't that long ago that we counted votes to decide who the national champion was. No one was really playing for one as much as they were playing for the right to point at someone else in a game that mattered more than it should and say, "I beat you." That's what Ohio State-Michigan is all about. It's about eight consecutive losses from 2012 to 2021. It's about Urban Meyer never knowing what it's like to lose to Michigan, and it's about Ryan Day knowing those four losses to the Wolverines might mean more to OSU fans than his one national title. It's about red X's on all words that begin with the letter "M" during the week of The Game. It's about 62-39 (2018), 56-27 (2019) for Ohio State, followed by 42-27 (2021) and 45-23 (2022) for Michigan. It's about Michigan closing the gap from laughable in 2020 to "We Own You" in 2024. It is reasonable that comparing how you win is as important as winning, especially given the Midwest penchant for fair play and taking the rough road, because it's the right way. And that brings us to the obvious rebuttal, where Ohio State might look at Michigan and ask, sincerely, "didn't they cheat?" Here's what we know: The NCAA launched an investigation early in the 2023 season amid allegations that Michigan used a robust in-person scouting and sign-stealing operation. The Wolverines served a penalty for this in the same season for which they won the national title, as the Big Ten suspended Jim Harbaugh for the final three regular-season games of the year after its investigation concluded Michigan had violated conference sportsmanship rules via an impermissible in‑person scouting operation. Just two months ago, according to reports, Michigan proposed suspending current coach Sherrone Moore for the third and fourth games of the 2025 season for deleting a thread of text messages as the scandal broke. Then, this past week, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti reportedly sent a letter to the NCAA Committee on Infractions suggesting that Michigan's football program should not face more sanctions stemming from the sign-stealing scheme. I think what galls most folks isn't that Michigan wasn't punished, but that the program was not punished harshly enough for its transgression. After all, Ohio State likely lost a chance to play for the 2012 national title because, after a 12-0 season, it was forced to serve a bowl ban because players sold memorabilia. Today, that feels quaint. Had some of these events not occurred, the question would remain: Who runs the Big Ten? In a season where the conference could win a third national title in as many years for the first time in the CFP era and in a league that Michigan helped found in 1896, which now features four programs in their second year as members, the consistent excellence of Penn State and the awakening of Indiana, now is the moment for the conference's two best programs over the last five decades to throw down a gauntlet. Come Nov. 29 at the Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the last two national champs will meet, and we'll look at the scoreboard to see who really runs this league, and, perhaps, the sport. RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The Number One College Football Show." Follow him at @RJ_Young . Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account , and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! 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USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
5-star 2026 Ohio State running back target Savion Hiter announces commitment date
As it stands right now, the Ohio State football team has put together a very good recruiting class for the 2026 cycle, but if we're being honest, it's a little behind where we've seen in past years, especially considering the Buckeyes are coming off a College Football Playoff national championship. And while many programs would love to have the class Ohio State has, there have been some pretty big misses as the program tries to figure out how name, image and likeness, and the House Settlement leading to direct revenue payments will work. The perception is that the Buckeyes have been conservative compared to other teams, and that has seemingly led to some misses on the high-priority targets. But there's another big one in play coming up with five-star running back Savion Hiter, who just announced his commitment date. According to the 247Sports Composite rankings, Hiter is ranked as the No. 1 running back and ninth overall prospect in the class. He will be making his college choice on August 19, according to an announcement on "X," and he'll be choosing among a final four of Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan, and Tennessee. To be fair, OSU doesn't seem to have the momentum in this race -- though that hasn't seemed to matter this year. Despite being on campus multiple times, the buzz is that it'll come down to Michigan and Tennessee, both of whom have been much more aggressive with NIL money than Ohio State has been. To date, the Buckeyes have just one running back commitment in the class of 2026, three-star Ohio product Favour Akih. It's beginning to look like he'll be the lone back in this class unless there's a surprise with Hiter, or OSU pivots and tries to find a diamond in the rough to round out the class. Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on X.
