Notre Dame vs. Ohio State: The Beautiful Imperfection Defines the 12-Team Playoff Era | Deadspin.com

Through their respective imperfections, Notre Dame and Ohio State are perfect representatives of the 12-team Playoff era’s promise.

Perfection, or at least near-perfection, has long characterized college football’s national championship. The sport has not had an officially recognized two-loss title team in modern times; Minnesota’s claim to a split championship in 1960 preceded its Rose Bowl loss to Washington, back in an era when the Associated Press declared its champion before the postseason.

Creating a playoff, and especially a three-plus-round playoff, was such a radical concept for college football because full-fledged playoffs are the antithesis of the pursuit of perfection.

But single-elimination tournaments are beloved for the chaos that comes from their inherent unpredictability. Millions lock into the NCAA Tournament every March to see tiny schools in far-flung locales fell giants with seemingly limitless resources.

The College Football Playoff could never match the Madness for numerous reasons. Not the least of those reasons is that football simply doesn’t lend itself to the same one-game variability that basketball does. However, the NFL Playoffs, kicking off just as the College Football Playoff is winding down, have delivered plenty of drama, with Wild Card entrants going on Super Bowl runs.

The inaugural 12-team Playoff Championship Game is a matchup much more akin to an NFL postseason than any past college football finale. The College Football Playoff might even be more chaotic, given that the Super Bowl has never pitted two Wild Card teams head-to-head.

Notre Dame and Ohio State are both the College Football Playoff’s version of wild-card participants.

Ohio State went from looking like a candidate most vulnerable for disappointment in the regular-season finale loss to Michigan to playing arguably the best football of any team in the field. After rolling past Tennessee and avenging a regular-season loss to Oregon in dominant fashion at the Rose Bowl, the Buckeyes showed their ability to win in crunch time at the Cotton Bowl.

Will Howard’s fourth-down carry wasn’t quite 85 Yards Through the Heart of the South, but the quarterback’s 18-yard pick-up to extend a drive culminating in a Quinshon Judkins touchdown could be the stuff of Ohio State legend.

Or, at least, it would be if Jack Sawyer hadn’t provided the definitive sequence of the Playoff. His pressure on Quinn Ewers as Texas drove for a potential game-tying touchdown resulted in a strip-sack, an exclamation-point scoop-and-score, one win away from an unprecedented national championship.

The Buckeyes are the quintessential wild card team: an undeniably talented bunch hitting its stride at the right time. Notre Dame is a wild card in another way, having taken one of the nation’s longest winning streaks into the Playoff while enduring mounting injuries and a possible flu outbreak.

Although a Fighting Irish championship win would maintain college football’s longstanding tradition of one- or no-loss title winners, Coach Marcus Freeman’s team is undeniably a wild card.

By remaining committed to its tradition of independence, Notre Dame can’t earn one of the automatic bids—not under the system’s current rules, anyway. However, ranked fifth going into the tournament, the Fighting Irish would not have been in the field at all, despite winning 10 straight to close their regular season.

That winning streak, which is now at 13 games heading into the National Championship Game, began after what was perhaps the only loss in the 2024 season more quizzical than Ohio State’s to Michigan.

The 16-14 setback to Northern Illinois in Week 2 gave Notre Dame the kind of imperfection on its resume that would have been too unsightly for the Fighting Irish to overcome in past iterations of the college football race.

“In your lowest moments, you find out the most about yourself,” Freeman said following his team’s 27-24 Orange Bowl win over Penn State. “We’ve had low moments, but we had a really low moment in Week 2, and these guys battled.”

Irish quarterback Riley Leonard’s individual effort in the Orange Bowl functioned as its own microcosm of Notre Dame’s entire season: rocky to start with an early interception and injury concerns but ultimately coming through for a big win.

Leonard’s pitch-and-catch connection with Jaden Greathouse, turning into a 54-yard, game-tying touchdown, wasn’t the game-winning play; Notre Dame still needed Christian Gray’s interception of Drew Allar to set up the decisive Mitch Jeter field goal.

But the touchdown reception that made it 24-24 was the moment the Orange Bowl semifinal felt over. For any flaws that might have denied the Fighting Irish a championship in the past, they have overcome them in the 2024 season to earn this title opportunity.

Neither Notre Dame nor Ohio State is perfect. And that’s a perfect reflection of what the new-look Playoff is meant to be.