Thursday and Friday’s College Football Playoff semifinals have the potential to be some of the most exciting in years with Notre Dame taking on Penn State and Ohio State going to Texas to face the Longhorns.

Either Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, left, or Penn State head coach James Franklin, posing with the Orange Bowl trophy on Wednesday in Dania Beach, Fla., will make history by reaching the College Football Playoff championship game. It’s taken 17 years, but college football is finally having its Super Bowl 41 moment.

Since the start of the College Football Playoff in 2014, there have been 11 national champions. Which were the best? We ranked them all.

Now that it’s all over and the Ohio State Buckeyes are the college football national champions, it can be definitively said: Expanding the College Football Playoff worked.

When Ohio State beat Notre Dame 34-23, the College Football Playoff wrapped up its biggest postseason ever, and despite the high amount of blowouts, the 12-team playoff was a success. A season ago, seven teams were vying for a spot in the playoff during conference championship week.

One of the enduring storylines of the 2024-25 college football season was newfound parity across the sport. On Monday night, the nation’s richest public athletic department won the sport’s biggest prize.