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In the immediate aftermath of Ohio State's home loss to Michigan in the 2024 regular season finale, to envision that the Buckeyes would be one of the two teams in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game would've required a pretty active and optimistic imagination. Calls were being made for Ryan Day's head, and just about every analyst alive was telling us that Will Howard couldn't win the big one. How foolish that all seems now.
Now, the Buckeyes are not just slated to play in their first National Championship Game since 2020, they come into the game as heavy favorites. According to FanDuel Sportsbook, Ohio State opens as a 9.5-point favorite against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, who scored a minor upset over the Penn State Nittany Lions in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Orange Bowl on Thursday night.
The Buckeyes have been the betting favorite in all three of their games in the College Football Playoff despite the fact that they've been the lower seeded team in each of the last two rounds. They closed as a 2.5-point favorite against Oregon in the Rose Bowl and blew the Ducks out of the water. On Friday night, the Buckeyes were somewhere in the neighborhood of a 7-point favorite against the 5th-seeded Longhorns, and thanks to Jack Sawyer's late-game touchdown, they managed to cover even if you got the line at Ohio State -7.5.
As far as Notre Dame goes, the Fighting Irish have won thirteen games in a row since their stunning early season home loss to Northern Illinois. In that span, the Irish defense has held nine of their thirteen opponents to 14 points or fewer. Doing so against the Buckeyes, who have been held under 20 points only once this season, could prove to be a difficult ask.
Despite being separated by only about 250 miles, Ohio State and Notre Dame have only met on the gridiron on eight occasions. Ohio State has won six games in a row — including a pair of regular season games in the 2022 and 2023 seasons — and the last time the Buckeyes lost to the Irish, the year was 1936 and ND scored a win in 7-2 barnburner on Halloween.
