Ranking The Best Potential CFP National Championship Matchups

December 16, 2024

Justin's College Football Playoff championship path power rankings. Read our NCAA CFB playoff rankings, and how the path to the championship for each of the 12 teams stack up.

We're less than a week away from the College Football Playoff beginning, with Indiana visiting Notre Dame on Friday night in the first game of the new 12-team tournament.

Looking ahead, there are a number of championship matchups with varying degrees of appeal to them. Fans would care a lot more about No. 1 Oregon and No. 2 Georgia playing for a title than they would about No. 11 SMU and No. 12 Clemson playing, for example.

Below are the top 10 best potential national championship matchups. These are based on a number of factors, including how competitive the game could be, how much fun the matchup would be, and big-name coaching or player matchups.

10. Ohio State vs Indiana

Rematches can be fun because you get a chance to see if the losing team has figured out a way to adjust. There are a few potential rematches that could happen in the title game, including Tennessee/Georgia and Clemson/Georgia games that just barely missed making it onto this list.

That makes 30-straight Ws for @OhioStateFB vs Indiana 💪🌰 pic.twitter.com/S0c4Mcz4QQ

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 23, 2024

Ohio State vs. Indiana gets the 10th spot because if it happened, it would be because Indiana had proven that its 11-1 season wasn't a fluke. The Hoosiers have gotten grief because they lost to the only ranked team they played, but that wouldn't be the case if we had a rematch.

It'd also be a lot of fun to see former MAC quarterback Kurtis Rourke playing for a national title. Like many of you, I love watching some MACtion on weeknights, so seeing a former Ohio Bobcats quarterback facing the only team he lost to in 2024 for a championship? Sign me up.

9. Texas vs SMU

The last time two schools from the same state played for the national championship was in the 1996 season when Florida and Florida State faced in the Sugar Bowl during the short-lived Bowl Alliance era.

I'm not even sure that game should count, though. The Pac-10 had the No. 2 team, Arizona State, but wasn't part of the Bowl Alliance, so while that game was billed as the national championship, it gets an asterisk in my book.

The first true in-state championship battle since college football started attempting to have championship games in 1992 could happen this year's season if No. 5 seed Texas and No. 11 seed SMU make it through. It's unlikely SMU can make that kind of run, but a Lone Star showdown would be one of the coolest things I've ever seen in college football.

8. Tennessee vs Penn State

Call this the Throwback Bowl.

Tennessee's last national title was in 1998 when Tee Martin quarterbacked the team to a 13-0 record and a Fiesta Bowl win over Florida State.

Penn State's last championship? You have to go back to the days when end-of-season rankings decided them, with the team finishing first in the AP poll in 1986.

In recent years, these teams have been known for big-game letdowns. What better way for one of them to shake off that label than by defeating the other in the title game?

7. Ohio State vs Notre Dame

These programs are in neighboring states. They have football legacies that stretch back to the beginnings of college football. Despite that, the sides have only met eight times, with the Buckeyes winning the last six matchups. Notre Dame's most recent win was a 7-2 victory in 1936.

The two most recent matchups of these teams came over the previous team seasons as the sides played a home-and-home in 2022 and 2023. Last year, the Buckeyes squeaked out a 17-14 win.

Notre Dame enters the playoffs on a 10-game win streak. Capping this season off with a championship game win over a team that the Irish lost to twice in the past three seasons would be a great way to cap off the 2024 season.

6. Oregon vs Penn State

We have another potential rematch here. This one would be a rematch of the Big Ten Championship Game, which Oregon won 45-37. Penn State scored a pair of touchdowns in the fourth quarter of that game, but it wasn't enough to get past the Ducks.

Playoff teams’ records against other playoff teams:

Notre Dame: 0-0
ASU: 0-0
Penn State: 0-2
Texas: 0-2
SMU: 0-1
Indiana: 0-1
Tennessee: 0-1
Boise State: 0-1
Clemson: 1-1
Ohio State: 2-1
Oregon: 3-0
Georgia: 4-0

— lee (@senor_crappy) December 9, 2024

Was that another example of Penn State fading in a big game? Maybe! The Nittany Lions lost both of their games against ranked teams by one score this season, so it might be that James Franklin's program just isn't capable of winning these kinds of games.

But Franklin and his squad get a shot at payback here and an opportunity to spoil Oregon's undefeated season.

5. Oregon vs Notre Dame

Maybe this one's too high, but there's something about it that really appeals to me, largely because these two teams have almost no history against each other. They've met twice, with Notre Dame winning 41-0 in 1976 and then the two sides tying at 13 apiece in 1982.

Part of what makes this an appealing game to me is the quarterback matchup, with two guys who went to new situations this season and found success.

Oregon's Dillon Gabriel just finished third in the Heisman voting and is on his third collegiate stop after three seasons at UCF and two at Oklahoma.

Friday is the biggest game of Riley Leonard's life.

Fortunately for the Fighting Irish, Notre Dame's senior quarterback has never felt better than he does right now, four days before the CFP.

"I have more confidence now than I ever have in my career."https://t.co/WEmDxckafw pic.twitter.com/nAY8Q4SZMF

— Tyler Horka (@tbhorka) December 15, 2024

On the Notre Dame side, Riley Leonard played three seasons at Duke before transferring to Notre Dame this season, where he posted the best completion percentage of his career.

4. Ohio State vs Georgia

Shockingly, these two teams have only played twice, most recently facing off in the 2022 Peach Bowl, which Georgia won in a 42-41 nailbiter, with Adonai Mitchell catching a 10-yard touchdown with under a minute to play to give the Bulldogs the win. The team would go on to beat TCU to win the national title.

Ohio State is allowing just 10.9 points per game this season, which is the best mark in college football. Georgia averages 33.2 points per game, which only ranks 29th, but that number was brought down by a couple of surprising results. If Carson Beck is good to go, this is a strong Bulldogs offense.

3. Texas vs Georgia

Third time's the charm?

The Longhorns have lost twice this season, falling 30-15 to the Bulldogs in October and then losing 22-19 in overtime in the SEC Championship Game. Texas inched closer in that second game. Could a third meeting be the charm?

What excites me about this potential game is that we've never seen anything like it. It was harder to research this than I expected, but I think the last time two teams met three times in one season was in 1909 when Baylor and TCU met three times.

I'm rooting for this game to happen because it'd be perfect to see something virtually unprecedented happen in the first year of this 12-team playoff.

2. Arizona State vs Boise State

Here's the thing: If either Arizona State or Boise State makes the title game and faces Oregon or Georgia, we're getting a bloodbath. Arizona State and Boise State might have gotten byes, but they're not the strongest teams in this field.

But there's still a lot of football left to play. Maybe the Bulldogs and Ducks get hit with the injury bug during this playoff run, and we wind up with some upsets. Maybe those upsets will lead to what might be the weirdest national title game ever: Arizona State vs. Boise State.

Cam Skattebo wants his respect 😤@ASUFootball pic.twitter.com/xrYHwHJoFw

— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) December 9, 2024

This matchup isn't this high because of the weirdness of it, though. It's this high because it would feature arguably the most compelling position vs. position battle in this entire field, with Heisman runner-up Ashton Jeanty and Heisman fifth-place finisher Cam Skattebo going against each other.

The two best running backs in the country fighting it out for a national championship? Sign me up.

1. Oregon vs Georgia

You knew this one was coming. Of all the potential championship matchups, this one's the best.

No. 1 vs. No. 2.

Dan Lanning vs. Kirby Smart.

Dillon Gabriel vs. (hopefully) Carson Beck.

Undefeated Oregon vs. a Georgia team that has four wins already against playoff teams.

I mean, what else is there to say about this one? It's the matchup we all want to see—the two best teams on the field facing off for all the marbles.

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