It’s insane to think about.
If you’re a casual college football fan who gets bored of the same teams in the field every year, well, I’ve got the semifinal for you. We’ve got 2 matchups with spreads that are less than 4 points (via FanDuel), and it’s with 4 teams who have a combined 1 national title in the 21st century. It’s 2001 Miami, which might be considered one of the greatest teams ever, but is also a team that the overwhelming majority of players remaining in the field weren’t alive to see.
It’s a semifinal field that doesn’t the likes of Alabama, Clemson, Georgia or Ohio State. That’s the first time that happened in the 12 years of the Playoff. Mind you, from 2014-22, each semifinal included at least 2 of those teams.
New blood? New blood.
It’s an improbable field. If Indiana or Ole Miss win a national title, they’ll mark the first lowest-ranked preseason AP Top 25 team to do so since Cam Newton led 2010 Auburn to a championship after starting No. 22 in the preseason poll. If Oregon wins a title, it’ll be the first ever and if Miami wins a title, it’ll do so before it won a conference that it joined 2 decades ago.
“Improbable” shouldn’t mean that these are all plucky underdogs. Lord knows they all put together remarkable quarterfinal performances to reach this point. So what should we watch for in these semifinals? Here are some early thoughts:
- Fiesta Bowl, Thursday, Jan. 8: Ole Miss vs. Miami (-2.5)
- Peach Bowl, Friday, Jan. 9: Oregon vs. Indiana (-3.5)
If there’s a guy who can handle the Miami defensive line, maybe it’s Trinidad Chambliss
Chambliss has been tough to bring down all year, but that sequence against Georgia reminded us all that he’s on a different level with his escapability. We’re well past him being some Division II transfer who could be overwhelmed by elite pass rushers.
On the season, Chambliss has been kept upright at a high rate on that up-tempo offense. Go figure that the only FBS quarterback who has been pressured on a lower percentage of his drop-backs this season is his Fiesta Bowl counterpart, Carson Beck, at 15.8%. Of course, Chambliss has been better than Beck at escaping pressure with a 13.7% pressure-to-sack ratio. Hence, why he only took 1 sack in the last 3 games even though he was pressured 21 times.
He’ll need all of that escapability after Rueben Bain and that Miami defensive front harassed Marcel Reed and Julian Sayin in upset victories. They registered a combined 12 sacks in those 2 games against units that had been solid in pass protection all season. Sayin was pressured 15 times against Miami (6 of which came from Bain), which was even higher than the 12 pressures that Indiana registered on him in the Big Ten Championship.
What Miami’s pressure has yielded is overwhelmed quarterbacks who have made pivotal, pre-determined reads that led to costly interceptions. In that 3-game stretch, Chambliss only produced 2 turnover-worthy plays. Keeping those numbers down could determine whether Ole Miss plays in its first true national championship game.
Ole Miss and Miami have elite smash-mouth running backs who could’ve played in 1995
It’s not just that both Mark Fletcher Jr. and Kewan Lacy productive. It’s that with both guys at less than 100%, they still finish runs. Yes, both had costly fumbles, but they both entered the quarterfinal round dealing with separate ailments, yet both are playing like guys who are leaving it all on the field. The numbers back that up, too.
Lacy has 98 carries when Ole Miss is leading by 1-7 points, which is 22 more than any FBS player, while Fletcher is No. 13 in FBS with 52 such carries, despite the fact that he missed nearly a month of action. In 2 Playoff games, Fletcher has a combined 10 missed tackles forced and 185 yards after first contact. Lacy, on the other hand, only has 2 missed tackles forced in 2 Playoff games, but he’s still No. 2 among Power Conference backs with 88 on the season, and he has 128 yards after first contact in those 2 Playoff games, though he missed the second half of the blowout win against Tulane with his shoulder injury. Any concerns about that being an issue subsided with how he bounced back after his fumble against Georgia.
Even Lacy’s toughness in the passing game was on full display:
Bringing down Lacy and Fletcher will take a group effort. These offensive play callers are going to lean heavily on them to slow down the respective pass rushers. Both backs could hit with 25 touches, especially in the event that this one stays competitive for 60 minutes.
My goodness, there’s a trio of daunting defenses left in this field
That sounded like a dig at Ole Miss. It wasn’t, though it’s pretty clear that unit isn’t on the same level as what Indiana, Miami and Oregon bring to the table. Those 3 are all rank in the top 10 in both scoring defense and yards/game allowed. On top of that, those 3 units allowed 3.3 yards/carry or less. And while Oregon’s raw numbers aren’t as good as Indiana and Miami’s, keep in mind that the Ducks just pitched a shutout against Texas Tech and the nation’s No. 2 scoring offense.
Look no further than the fact that those 3 defenses allowed a combined 17 points in their quarterfinal victories, 14 of which came against Jeremiah Smith and an Ohio State offense that scored 20 points less than its season average. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that Miami DC Corey Hetherman and Indiana DC Bryant Haines were 2 of the 5 Broyles Award finalists (both of whom were on Curt Cignetti’s James Madison staff). Their units have put on a clinic down the stretch. Shoot, Indiana held Ohio State and Alabama to 1 combined offensive touchdown.
And to be fair to Ole Miss, that defense has epitomized “bend, don’t break” after it had 5 players selected in the 2025 NFL Draft. Perhaps you could carry that mantra to Pete Golding, who didn’t break when Lane Kiffin left and started poaching his staff. Let’s not forget that Ole Miss just held a surging Georgia offense to less than 5 yards per play. It might not have the firepower of those other 3 units, but Suntarine Perkins and Princewell Umanmielen are more than capable of stepping up in big-time moments.
Oregon-Indiana has the better shot of being a defensive slugfest with an over/under of 46.5 compared to 51.5 for Miami-Ole Miss, but don’t rule out the possibility that the first team to hit 3 touchdowns in either one of those games could be moving on to a national championship.
Go figure that Indiana is the only team who can’t sell some sort of “revenge” angle
Well, unless you consider IU’s revenge angle to be on the entire sport of college football, which contributed to it having the second-most losses of any program ever (Northwestern just overtook the dubious top spot). In that way, sure, IU has a revenge angle.
But for everyone else, the revenge angles are somewhat obvious.
Oregon has the revenge angle of knowing its lone loss suffered in the regular season came vs. Indiana, which ended the nation’s longest home winning streak. You can bet Dan Lanning will feed into that, though it’s worth noting that 2 of his 7 career losses as a head coach came in his lone in-season rematches. That was against 2024 Ohio State and 2023 Washington, both of whom went on to play for a national title.
Miami’s revenge angle against Ole Miss is a bit more personal for Beck, who obviously missed the ultimate revenge angle when his former team lost to Ole Miss. But don’t forget that last year when he was at Georgia, he was completely dominated by Golding’s defense in a loss in Oxford. Beck played arguably the worst game of his career against Ole Miss and a rare Georgia blowout loss.
What’s Ole Miss’ revenge angle? Um, it rhymes with “pane tiffin.” It’s hard to have more of a revenge angle than a team with a coach who left them before the Playoff. That’ll continue to be a topic of conversation, but more so because Ole Miss has 6 assistants who are set to join LSU. How they continue to juggle those duties with the transfer portal window opened remains to be seen.
Revenge will be on the minds of many. Whoever harnesses it best could have a chance to play for all the marbles.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
