College Football Playoff semifinals first look: Indiana or Oregon? Ole Miss or Miami?
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Chris Vannini and Justin Williams
Nothing signifies a new era of college football more than these four teams playing in the semifinals.
The second season of the 12-team College Football Playoff has been whittled down to a final four. One side of the bracket features the unlikely pairing of a fresh SEC face against a former power that’s been suddenly reborn. The other side is a Big Ten rematch involving a former conference doormat that’s suddenly a national power. College football is a chaos sport that giveth with both hands.
The first year of a straight-seeding bracket format yielded a couple of quarterfinal shockers, with 10-seed Miami upsetting reigning champs Ohio State and 6-seed Ole Miss — led by a head coach at the helm for just his second game — slaying mighty Georgia, the SEC champ. On New Year’s Day, the Indiana renaissance continued as the top-seeded Hoosiers advanced in commanding fashion to face a similarly impressive Oregon squad. And all four head coaches are former Nick Saban assistants.
It’s a matchup of two programs that few (if any) experts expected to be here. Ole Miss is going through its best season in more than 60 years, while Miami is looking for its best season in more than 20. Ole Miss is playing without the head coach who led the team through the regular season in Lane Kiffin, now at LSU, but the Rebels just beat No. 3 Georgia 39-34 thanks to a field goal in the final seconds. Miami just beat the defending national champion Ohio State as a double-digit seed after making the Playoff as the final at-large team in the field.
The Fiesta Bowl has not been kind to Miami. The Hurricanes have an 0-4 record in the game and took some of the most crushing losses in program history in Arizona. That includes the national championship loss to Penn State in 1987 and the national championship loss to Ohio State in 2003. Will this time be different?
Ole Miss, meanwhile, has never played in the Fiesta Bowl, though it has played in three Sugar Bowls and two Peach Bowls since 2014. Ole Miss and Miami have only met three times, the last coming in 1951.
First look
Miami is the first double-digit seed to win a College Football Playoff game, and the Canes have done it twice. They went to a windy Kyle Field in the first round and pulled out a 10-3 win over Texas A&M thanks to a late touchdown by star freshman receiver Malachi Toney and an interception in their own end zone. In the Cotton Bowl, Miami jumped out to a 14-0 lead on defending national champion Ohio State with a Keionte Scott pick six and held on for a 24-14 win. The Canes were the first team to score more than 16 points against Ohio State this year.
Miami has been led by its defensive front, racking up 12 sacks through two Playoff games against two of the best offensive lines in the country. Quarterback Carson Beck has been just as efficient as he’s needed to be, completing 33 of 46 passes with two touchdowns and no turnovers. He hasn’t taken many downfield shots, but he passed for seven first downs against Ohio State and ran for another with his legs.
Ole Miss’ path is just as unusual. The Rebels went 11-1 in the regular season, the only loss a one-score defeat against Georgia. But drama around Kiffin hung over the end of the season, especially after he accepted the LSU head coaching job. Kiffin wanted to keep coaching the Rebels, but the school didn’t want its head coach handling two jobs, especially when his next job was with a rival. The Rebels promoted defensive coordinator Pete Golding in Kiffin’s place. Several current Ole Miss assistants will join Kiffin at LSU after the season, including offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr.
Trinidad Chambliss wasn’t the starting quarterback when the season began, but the Division II Ferris State transfer replaced an injured Austin Simmons early in the year and never looked back, finishing in the top 10 of Heisman Trophy voting. With Golding in charge, Ole Miss beat Tulane 41-10 in a CFP first-round rematch of a game played in September.
In the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal, Ole Miss trailed Georgia 21-12 at halftime, but second-half magic from Chambliss propelled a Rebels comeback to take a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter, only for Georgia to rally and tie the game. In the final minute, Chambliss drove Ole Miss into field goal range, and Lucas Carneiro hit a game-winning 47-yard field goal.
Why we should be excited
These are two of the most interesting stories of the postseason: Ole Miss players playing for themselves and their fans after Kiffin decided LSU was a better place to be, Miami finally proving the doubters wrong and trying to bring “The U” back, with its NFL legends on the sideline.
Ole Miss has an electric quarterback who was playing in Division II last year and a head coach who did not at all expect to be in this position. It also has a much-maligned defense that found a way to shut down Georgia in the second half. Miami has a quarterback trying to show everyone he’s still got it, plus a budding star freshman receiver and perhaps the fiercest defensive front in the country. And it’s led by an alumnus head coach who has finally built the bully he promised upon his homecoming.
One of these two teams, incredibly, is going to play for the national championship.
It’s another Playoff rematch of a regular-season game, this year’s fourth. Indiana won 30-20 on Oct. 11 at Oregon, handing the Ducks their only loss. A 35-yard pick six by Oregon freshman cornerback Brandon Finney Jr. knotted the score in the fourth quarter, but it wasn’t enough to vanquish Indiana and quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who responded with a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to take the lead for good.
That game officially legitimized Indiana as a national title contender, foreshadowing the Hoosiers’ eventual Big Ten championship and No. 1 CFP seed, as well as Mendoza’s Heisman Trophy. Oregon will look to avenge that result and prove that last year’s humbling quarterfinal Playoff exit was an aberration.
This is the fifth all-time matchup between the recent conference foes, with the series tied 2-2. Prior to the 2025 regular-season meeting, Indiana last beat Oregon in Eugene in a 2004 nonconference game; the Ducks won the first two meetings, home and away, in 1963 and ’64.
The Hoosiers will play in their third Peach Bowl, having lost in the previous appearances in 1987 and 1990. This is the first Peach Bowl appearance for the Ducks.
First look
This semifinal pairing ensures a Big Ten team will reach the national championship game for a third straight season, with Michigan and Ohio State winning the past two rings.
It’s the biggest game in the history of Indiana football, on the heels of the program’s first Rose Bowl victory. The Hoosiers clobbered Alabama 38-3 in the quarterfinal, which is somehow a perfectly reasonable outcome for college football in 2025. Indiana’s unprecedented rise under coach Curt Cignetti continued with a complete dismantling of the Crimson Tide, outgaining Alabama 407 yards to 193 and holding it to a 3-for-13 performance on third and fourth down. Mendoza was spectacular yet again, finishing 14 of 16 through the air for 192 yards and three touchdowns, throwing more scores than incompletions. Indiana rushed for 215 yards on 50 carries, led by running backs Kaelon Black and Roman Hemby, bullying Alabama in the trenches. Wideouts Elijah Sarratt and Omar Cooper Jr. both caught touchdown passes.
The Hoosiers also halted an 0-6 skid by teams that had earned first-round byes to open the 12-team Playoff era.
After putting up 51 points against James Madison in the first round, scoring touchdowns on each of its first five possessions, Oregon turned in a defensive masterclass against Texas Tech in the Orange Bowl, shutting out the Red Raiders 23-0. It was a dominant performance by the Ducks, limiting Tech to 215 total yards and forcing four turnovers, three of them by Finney (two interceptions, one fumble recovery). The other turnover was the play of the game, an athletic strip sack by outside linebacker Matayo Uiagalelei early in the second half that Oregon turned into a touchdown on the next play.
The Ducks offense wasn’t nearly as prolific against a stout Texas Tech defense, but quarterback Dante Moore still completed 79 percent of his throws for 234 yards, including four passes that went for 20-plus, giving Oregon 95 plays of 20-plus yards this season, the most in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
It sets up a star-studded, good-on-good showdown between a pair of top-10 offenses and defenses that have a combined 27-1 record this season and won by a combined score of 61-3 in the quarterfinals. Both teams average roughly 40 points per game and allow less than 17. Something’s gotta give.
Why we should be excited
Indiana’s dream season continues. Cignetti and the Hoosiers have proven by now that this is no fluke, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive, a turnaround unlike anything the sport has ever seen. A national championship would set that in stone, but it will first require toppling Dan Lanning and the high-octane Ducks twice in the span of three months.
Oregon has an explosive offense with a bounty of gamebreakers at the skill positions — wideout Malik Benson, tight end Kenyon Sadiq and a stable of running backs — and a defense that just pitched a Playoff shutout. If it can get those two phases clicking simultaneously, there is more than enough talent to do what it could not do last season as the top overall seed.
There are storylines aplenty. The battle between Cignetti and Lanning, two head coaches who embrace the big-game spotlight, should be a fun one on the field and behind the microphone. Mendoza and Moore could each be top five picks in the 2026 NFL Draft. This could also mark the start of a new Big Ten rivalry. The two schools aren’t scheduled to meet again in the regular season until 2028 in Bloomington, but there could be more conference championship and/or Playoff meetings before that, and whichever wins this semifinal will set the tone for those future clashes.
It may be a Big Ten rematch, but nothing about this matchup feels stale.
Nothing signifies a new era of college football more than these four teams playing in the semifinals, all of them decades removed from a national championship, if they even have one. The days of dynasties feel like distant memories. Anyone could win this thing.