Defending champ Ohio State in 3rd Cotton Bowl in a row, Miami back in Texas where it won CFP debut

By Canadian Press on December 28, 2025.

Defending national champion Ohio State is in the Cotton Bowl for the third year in a row, while Miami is already returning to Texas just more than a week after being in the state for a win in its College Football Playoff debut.

Both teams were set to arrive in North Texas on Sunday, three days before their New Year’s Eve matchup in the first of the four CFP quarterfinal games.

The third-ranked Buckeyes (12-1) are three weeks removed from their 13-10 loss to undefeated No. 1 Indiana in the Big Ten championship game on Dec. 6. They still got the second seed and a first-round bye in the 12-team playoff, providing an extended break but also more time to ponder missing out on a conference title.

“We had to take a step back because that loss kind of hurt,” Ohio State cornerback Lorenzo Styles said. “We had to feel that pain, but then it’s like everything we want is still in front of us.”

Now it’s win or go home for the Buckeyes, the only team to appear in five of the last seven six CFPs — all since Ryan Day became head coach. It is their seventh overall, which began by winning the inaugural CFP championship game at the end of the 2014 season in the same stadium where the Cotton Bowl is played.

“We know the last time we stepped on the field, we left something on the field,” said linebacker and brother Sonny Styles. “So this time, we got to leave everything out there.”

CFP first-timer No. 10 Miami (11-2) got an at-large berth even without making the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, and that league’s champ being left out of the field. The Hurricanes had a three-week gap between their regular season-ending win at Pittsburgh and CFP debut, which they won 10-3 at seventh-seeded Texas A&M on Dec. 20.

Now they will be about 200 miles from College Station to play the Buckeyes, who will have more time off than the Hurricanes had between their games. Miami coach Mario Cristobal isn’t sure if there is any advantage, or disadvantage, to those time gaps between games for either side.

“You can never tell. That’s gone back and forth in so many different ways over the years. And I think if you could put it in a bottle and sell it, you would be a billionaire,” Cristobal said. “The bye weeks and the extra time off, sometimes it’s been great for people, and sometimes it hasn’t. And then vice versa as it relates to playing. … I don’t think there’s an exact predictor of success or non-success as it relates to time off.”

This will be only the second time Ohio State and Miami play in a postgame game. It comes nearly 23 years after the Buckeyes’ double-overtime win in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 3, 2003, that denied the Hurricanes their second consecutive national championship. They haven’t won one since.

Ohio State won its sixth AP national championship last season, when the Cotton Bowl was a CFP semifinal game. The Buckeyes didn’t have a first-round bye in the first year of the 12-team playoff and their 28-14 win over Texas in the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys was their third win last postseason, before then beating Notre Dame for the national title.

The Cotton Bowl wasn’t one of the playoff games two years ago, the last in the four-team format. The Buckeyes lost that one to Missouri.

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Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press