CFP National Championship

The final college football game of the 2020/2021 season is already upon us. The game will take place on Monday, January 11, 2021, after one of the oddest and shortest college seasons ever. The game will feature two college football power houses in the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Ohio State Buckeyes. The two schools had completely different paths to the championship game, with both facing different obstacles along the way due to the pandemic. It now comes down to which team is most prepared and most healthy, but by this point both teams should be well prepared for the unexpected.

To reach this pinnacle game, both teams took slightly different paths. Alabama had to navigate a full SEC slate of 10 games and the SEC championship. Along the way, they had big wins against top opponents like Texas A&M, Georgia, and Florida in the SEC Championship game. Although the Crimson Tide went undefeated, they still faced struggles off the field with players and legendary coach Nick Saban testing positive for Covid-19 multiple times throughout the season. Regardless, the pandemic did not slow down the Tide, and Alabama made their way to the College Football Playoff where they faced the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame on New Year’s Day in the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl is typically played in Pasadena, California, but this year due to Covid restrictions in California, the game took place in front of a limited capacity crowd at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The relocation of the game did not have much impact on the game itself, and Alabama was able to easily defeat the Irish to advance to the National Championship.

Like Alabama, Ohio State also ended their season as undefeated conference champions. However, this 2020 season almost didn’t happen for the Buckeyes. In early fall, the Big 10 was ready to cancel the 2020 season before it even started. Big 10 officials eventually settled on an abbreviated six game schedule that included all conference games and kicked off on October 24^th, 2020. Ohio State had big wins against Penn State and Northwestern, but a lot of arguments were made that the Buckeyes should be ranked lower as they only played about half the number of games other conferences played. At the end of the season, the Buckeyes did enough by remaining undefeated and earned a spot in the College Football Playoff to play in the Sugar Bowl against the number two ranked Clemson Tigers. Many saw the Buckeyes as a bit of an underdog against the Tigers, but they surprised most of the country by defeating Clemson 49-28 and moved on to the National Championship game.

The College Football Playoff National Championship will take place in Miami this year at Hard Rock Stadium. Tickets are even harder to come by than usual, with only 16,000 fans being admitted to the game. This is also the first time tickets will not be on sale to the general public for the National Championship, so the only way to purchase tickets will be through the secondary market. Each school was allotted 3,750 tickets for the game, so most of the crowd will be made up of family members of players and coaches, as well as students from each university. This will still likely be one of the largest crowds each team has played under this year, even though the stadium will only be at 20 percent capacity. Alabama are going into the game as favorites again this year, having more playing time and experience in the big game. However, the Buckeyes hit their stride against Clemson and should be fresh after only playing seven games up until this point. This 2020/2021 season has been anything but ordinary, so I’m sure we’re in store for something unusual when these two juggernauts face off on the 11^th.