Winners and Losers from the 2025 College Football National Championship

When there's a talented team on a mission, it's a scary thing for the rest of the college football world.

There wasn't a better group of players assembled in the sport this season than the Ohio State Buckeyes, who blended elite high school recruiting with player development and elite transfer portal additions to create a championship team.

On Monday night, Ohio State completed a beautiful buzz saw of a run through the College Football Playoffs with a 34-23 win over Notre Dame in the national championship game.

They won every game by double digits. Even though the title game wound up closer than expected because of a mad-dash, second-half, must-see-TV comeback from the Irish, the Buckeyes made one huge passing play to Jeremiah Smith at the end of the game after building an early 24-point lead.

As it turns out, a shocking, end-of-the-year loss to Michigan may have been an embarrassment for Buckeyes fans, but it's like the fire got lit. And it wasn't a hot-seat flame for coach Ryan Day.

After that, the Buckeyes were determined to prove what a juggernaut they were, and, boy, did they ever.

The Buckeyes are back on top.

It had to be impossible for Ryan Day to ignore when the whispers became angry screams for his job.

Following yet another loss to hated rival Michigan, cries of "He can't win the big one" were deafening. It was a national talking point, and even though the hot-seat talk was just white noise, the microscope certainly had to make Day feel like an ant under the searing heat of the sun.

Four double-digit wins and a national championship later, those grumbles are gone. With a 34-23 win over Notre Dame on Monday night in which his team built a huge lead and he gambled with a late deep ball to Jeremiah Smith to seal the win, Day is now a national championship winner.

He joins legendary Buckeyes coaches Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer with that honor.

"They're my motivation," Day told ESPN regarding his team after the game. "My family at home, my wife and kids, then these guys. That's why I get up every morning every day, to make sure these guys reach their dreams and goals. That's all it comes down to.

"And then also it just shows an example, when things get hard in life, you just keep swinging. That's our culture."

As Day was finishing his answer, defensive end Jack Sawyer stormed up, bear-hugged him and yelled, "National champions, baby!"

To say it was unexpected would be ridiculous since the Buckeyes have so much talent and are loaded at every position. But Day finally found the right formula to mix it all together into a title run.

In a national championship game that Ohio State had virtually dominated throughout, Notre Dame had an opportunity to keep a massive momentum-jolt on its side midway through the third quarter.

Instead, coach Marcus Freeman's puzzling decision killed any Fighting Irish chance to win when Mitch Jeter's field goal clanked off the upright, and the Irish went empty-handed on that drive.

After closing the gap to 31-15, the Irish finally got the takeaway they absolutely had to have, batting the ball free from Emeka Egbuka on the Irish 20-yard line after a long passing play following a much-needed Notre Dame touchdown.

Riley Leonard and Jaden Greathouse connected on a huge third-down pass for 30 yards and a fourth-down conversion to take the Irish all the way down to an and-goal situation with 9:24 left. But when it came down to fourth-and-goal, Freeman decided to trot out Jeter for a field goal.

At that point of the game, why?

You had a free possession after a forced turnover, and you'd just driven it down with a chance to score a touchdown. Remember, the Irish still needed a pair of touchdowns and a pair of two-point conversions to tie the game.

Why did Freeman not roll the dice? What good was a field goal in that situation, anyway?

Jeter doinked the field-goal attempt off the left upright, and Notre Dame failed to get any points out of the drive, allowing the Buckeyes to drain even more valuable time off the clock. It was a puzzling decision, to say the least, even if the Irish still weren't done with their comeback.

When Ohio State went after former Kansas State quarterback Will Howard in the transfer portal, the question was whether he was dynamic enough to be a championship-caliber quarterback.

As the season progressed, he answered those questions. Throughout the College Football Playoff, Howard took his game to another level. In Monday's national championship game win over Notre Dame, he took over.

Even though the Buckeyes didn't do anything explosive, Howard meticulously drove his team to touchdowns on all three first-half drives. In doing so, he was just about perfect.

As Ohio State built a two-touchdown advantage, Howard completed 14-of-15 first-half passes for 144 yards and a pair of scores. But then he kind of went quiet until a game-clinching play helped the Buckeyes breathe a sigh of relief.

Needing something positive with the Irish storming back, Howard dropped back and delivered a beautiful ball to Jeremiah Smith for a 57-yard gain to take the game to the 2-minute warning and allow the Buckeyes to salt away the win. It was maybe the biggest play at the most-needed moment.

The 6'4", 235-pound Pennsylvania native is proving he deserves a shot in the NFL, and he may just be surging up draft boards. Not only is he big, but he's athletic. Though he didn't do anything to check the downfield-throwing box against the Irish, he's done plenty of that through the playoffs.

Howard's playoff numbers are gaudy. He was the maestro needed who made everything tick. With so many elite playmakers around him, Howard just needed to be a distributor, which he was. But he was also the catalyst who was far from a game manager, throwing for 1,150 yards in four games with eight touchdowns and just a pair of interceptions.

With the way Quinshon Judkins shredded the SEC in his first two collegiate seasons at Ole Miss, most expected that he'd shine brighter on a bigger stage at Ohio State, even alongside returning running back TreVeyon Henderson.

The season didn't statistically go that way for the junior who left Oxford for Columbus and a big NIL deal.

In Monday night's national championship game victory over Notre Dame, Judkins proved he was worth the money, finally eclipsing 1,000 rushing yards in his 16th game of the year. He was the Buckeyes' top offensive weapon in the victory, running 11 times for 100 yards and a pair of scores and catching two passes for 21 yards and another touchdown.

Judkins scored a trio of touchdowns to lead Ohio State, and he did it in myriad ways. First, he plowed in from 9 yards out on tackle-breaking, heavyweight run to cap a 10-play, 76-yard drive to give Ohio State its first lead in the second quarter.

Will Howard then found a wide-open Judkins in the end zone from 6 yards out, as he'd slipped free of a defender to extend the lead later in the quarter to put the exclamation point on a 12-play, 80-yard drive.

Then, with the Irish needing a stop to start the second half, he made a beautiful cutback on a counter run and sprinted 70 yards to set up his own 1-yard touchdown to start play in the second half and end any chances the Irish would have to come back.

Judkins is a can't-miss NFL running back who showcased his skill set for a title.

No matter when their offense has sputtered at times throughout the season, Notre Dame has been able to rely on a defense that carried them all the way to the national championship game.

But against an Ohio State team obviously on a rampage, the Fighting Irish and coordinator Al Golden had no answers.

Like Texas last week, the Irish took away deep plays, but Buckeyes offensive coordinator Chip Kelly called yet another brilliant game in carving up Notre Dame in building a lead. Al Golden had no answers as defensive coordinator, and that's saying something.

Simply put: Notre Dame couldn't get off the field, allowing conversions on all six third-down attempts from the Buckeyes in the first half and 9-of-12 for the game and piling up 445 total yards.

"We've just got to get off the field on third down," an obviously frustrated Marcus Freeman told ESPN's Holly Rowe going into the locker room at halftime. "We've got to be able to cover. We were trying to play a little man, and they convert, and then we play a little zone, and they'll convert. We've got to get some things fixed."

In other words, no matter what they tried, nothing worked. Tennessee, Oregon and Texas—the other three Buckeyes opponents throughout the playoffs—can commiserate.

They made a terrific Irish defense look pedestrian. This was a unit that entered the game allowing just 14.3 points per game, second nationally behind the Buckeyes. They were ninth in total defense and fifth in third-down defense, allowing a conversion rate of just 29.8 percent.

Ohio State took those numbers and threw them in the paper shredder, dominating every time it had the ball and decisively winning a game that started so stellar with the Irish's early lead.

Everybody wrote them off and rightfully so.

But Notre Dame didn't reel off 13 consecutive victories after a shocking early-season loss to Northern Illinois by rolling over and playing dead in the face of adversity. They didn't on Monday night in the national championship game, either.

Instead, senior quarterback Riley Leonard and his top receiving playmaker Jaden Greathouse tried to pick up the Fighting Irish and carry them to an improbable victory.

As it turns out, a 24-point second-half hole was just too great to dig out of, but that tandem gave the nation something exciting to watch in what looked like would be a good, old fashioned snore-fest.

In his only year as Notre Dame's starting quarterback, Leonard has been an underrated catalyst after transferring from Duke. Forced out of his comfort zone and pressed into being a pocket passer, the fifth-year senior from Alabama responded.

He finished the game with 278 all-purpose yards, and his biggest weapon was Greathouse. He found him five times for 111 yards and a pair of touchdowns to help Notre Dame storm back from what appeared to be a laugher of a deficit.

The Buckeyes simply didn't have an answer. Every time Leonard needed a big play, he went to Greathouse, and the big receiver responded. There just wasn't enough arrows in the quiver in the end as the Buckeyes did just enough to win.

Apparently, no butterflies were allowed in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Despite being the biggest game of the year for Ohio State and Notre Dame, Monday's national championship was shy on the jitters. Both teams came out playing their game and stormed out of the gates with big-time drives.

The Buckeyes kicked off to Notre Dame and then could have read a novel and taken a nap before getting the ball back. Quarterback Riley Leonard meticulously drove the Irish down the field on an epic 18-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that chewed up more than 9 minutes.

He bulldozed in from a yard out for the score, finishing the drive with 31 passing yards, 34 rushing yards and the touchdown to lead a start where Notre Dame had two third-down conversions and on the two it didn't get, it made the marker on fourth downs.

It was the longest opening scoring drive of a BCS or College Football Playoff title game.

Ohio State wasn't to be deterred, though, answering right back. Even with Notre Dame disguising coverages and going with its normal man-to-man coverage on just two plays, Will Howard marched the Buckeyes down for the tying score quickly.

He completed all five of his passes for 46 yards, finding superstar freshman Jeremiah Smith for the game-tying score untouched from 8 yards out very early in the second quarter for the equalizer.

This was exactly the type of heavyweight start we all wanted to see.