At the start of the season, few would have picked Miami, Ole Miss, Oregon and Indiana to be the final four standing, but here we are.

Three of these teams didn’t feature in their respective conference championship games and one lost its head coach right before the Playoff, but two have risen above all the rest.

We round up what happened in an exciting penultimate week of the College Football Playoff.

Miami 31 @ 27 Ole Miss
Fiesta Bowl
Hurricanes head home to Hard Rock as battling Rebels bow out.

The Fiesta Bowl came down to the wire, with four lead changes in the fourth quarter before Carson Beck’s four-yard scramble to the endzone proved the difference in a hard-fought battle.

While Ole Miss tried in vain to reclaim the lead with 18 seconds left on the clock, Trinidad Chambliss’ last-ditch hurl into the endzone fell incomplete, ending a run that defied Lane Kiffin’s decision to walk out on the eve of the knockout stages. Beck, meanwhile, overcome an earlier interception to turn in one of his best performances of the season, throwing for 268 yards and two touchdowns in a win that sees the Hurricanes head home to Miami for the National Championship game.

“We never flinched,” the QB said. “In the face of adversity, when we had to respond, we responded.”

Offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson, recognising the weight of doubt placed on Beck since his ignominious departure from Georgia, felt that his quarterback ‘deserved that moment’, adding that ‘it was up to him to rise up and take it, and he did. It probably silenced a lot of critics’.

Miami head coach Mario Cristobal was full of praise for the character displayed by his QB.

“He’s hungry, he’s driven, he’s a great human being, and all he wants to do is to see his team-mates have success,” Cristobal said. “And that’s what we witnessed tonight.”

And it’s not just Beck, but the team as a whole that have felt they have had to fight hard to silence those critics who felt they were not deserving of Playoff spot.

“It almost seems like the tougher it gets, the better we play,” Cristobal continued. “And it’s a testament to them, to their resilience and their will.”

It feels like an age since the Hurricanes were last relevant on a national stage with their 2001 National Championship team but, now, a side that did not feature in the ACC championship game and just scraped into the Playoff is one step away from a Natty.

“It has been a long time coming,” former Hurricane and Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Edgerrin James commented. “Once Coach Cristobal got here, we brought back the old Miami ways. To get into the playoffs and then end up in the championship in Miami, there’s nothing better than that. It’s laid out for us.”

Miami have now achieved seven straight wins since the unexpected loss to SMU, the last five of which havecome on the road. Now they will get a home fixture for the most important game of all, the first team to do so since the beginning of the BCS/CFP era in 1998. The significance of being able to play for college football’s biggest prize at home, in front of their own fans, was not lost on linebacker Wesley Bissainthe, who is from Miami.

“When I saw everybody running on the field, it felt like a dream, like I was waiting on somebody to wake me up or something,” Bissainthe said. “I’m a Miami guy, so playing in front of my peers, from where I’m from? It’s going to mean everything.”

Ole Miss was also a team that many would have written off with the sudden departure of head coach Kiffin immediately before the Playoff. The chaos and uncertainty that followed has only strengthened the Rebels’ resolve, fighting towards an ultimately disappointing end to the best season the school has ever had.

Rebs QB Chambliss, who was playing division two football last season at Ferris State, has now written his name in the Mississippi history books since taking over for an injured Austin Simmons earlier in the season. Chambliss was electric throughout, utilising his athleticism on the ground along with his passing ability to match Beck step for step but, in the end, his 277 yards and a touchdown were not quite enough.

“This team has just sacrificed a lot to get to this point,” Chambliss said. “This season’s been bumpy and there’s been a lot of things going on, but we just kept our focus. It’s been truly special.”

New Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding shared his lasting memory of the game.

“I will just remember how they embraced each other,” he said of the emotional scenes on the sidelines. “There was a lot going on the last month. They’re going to be talking about this for a long time.”

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Oregon 22 @ 56 Indiana
Peach Bowl
Ducks overwhelmed by Hoosier juggernaut.

Indiana has always been known as a basketball school, with football being an afterthought. Under Curt Cignetti, however, the Hoosiers have been transformed into a football powerhouse, possibly the most complete team in the country despite having no five-star recruits. Now the question is being asked: is this the best college team ever?

That question may be answered next week if Indiana raise the National Championship trophy, but the way Hoosiers handled the Oregon Ducks, with an unrelenting dominance, in the Peach Bowl provided a lot of evidence towards that confirmation. However many blowout wins against top opponents they rack up, Indiana still carries that underdog mentality, as expressed by receiver Charlie Becker postgame.

“We always come in here with a huge chip on our shoulder, something to prove,” he said. “A lot of people doubted us. They say it’s going to be close games every game we played, or they say, ‘We’re going to take the other team’, but I feel like we’ve come in here and proven that we can handle these kinds of games and, as the year goes on, the chip on our shoulder just grows more and more, which gets the dog in us to want to come out even more.”

Behind the ever-expressionless eyes of Coach Cignetti, you’d expect some part to be jumping for joy on the inside, but Cignetti won’t be satisfied until he’s taken this team right to the top of the mountain, using the doubt from last season to stoke the fire for the unstoppable train.

“There was a lot of scepticism after last year, that we were a fluke,” Cignetti said. “That [2024] team did a lot of great things and got it all started. That team never trailed until the ninth game of the year and, when it did, 10-0 in the first quarter up at Michigan State, they scored 47 straight… I think a lot of that negative stuff in the media fuelled the guys returning from this team, and we added some real key pieces.”

Indiana was on top right from the get go in Atlanta and didn’t even start with the ball. D’Angelo Ponds perfectly read Dante Moore’s quick out pass, picking him off and returning it for six.

“I kind of read [Moore’s] eyes and got a good jump on it,” Ponds said. “It’s just an amazing feeling, walking into the end zone.”

Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein, who will depart Oregon to become Kentucky’s new head coach, put this down to a great defensive effort rather than an error on Moore’s part.

“They made a good play,” Stein said. “We threw a quick out. It’s one of our plays we love and just a good drive-starting play. The guy made a good play and jumped the route. It’s not on Dante. The guy’s open for a second.”

Three turnovers for Oregon in the first half meant that points were left on the field and the Ducks found themselves trailing 35-7 at the interval.

“We spotted these guys 21 points,” Stein admitted. “It’s hard to win when you turn the ball over three times in your own territory. You don’t do anything good for your defense in that aspect. Obviously, a poor job by us taking care of the ball.”

Oregon head coach Dan Lanning acknowledged Indiana’s quick start and how hard it was for his team to keep pace.

“They started off hot, and really didn’t slow down,” Lanning said. “They were able to run it and have success. We were able to generate a little momentum there at times, but we were so far in the hole that you couldn’t [climb] out of that.”

Tosh Lupoi, Oregon’s defensive coordinator who is also departing for a head coaching job with California, shared his pride in the way the team has conducted itself throughout the campaign, stating ‘the way these guys have performed all season, I’m really proud of them and proud to be a part of it’. But Lupoi was also critical of their performance in the game saying it was ‘a really poor finish’.

“There’s no excuse for the performance,” he conceded. “You mentioned short fields, doesn’t matter. An elite defense can [stop them], just like we did last week, right?”

Hoosiers QB Fernando Mendoza looked every bit the Heisman winner, ruthlessly efficient and accurate, carving through the Ducks’ defense on his way to five touchdowns.

“My job is to be effective with really accurate balls and really great decisions, and that’s what I pride myself on every single play,” Mendoza said. “So I’m glad those results have come. However, none of that matters. All that matters right now is [the] national championship.”

Mendoza only recorded 177 yards, but didn’t need any more due to the efficiency of the drives and the strong support from the running game that included two touchdowns from Kaelon Black, but also saw significant contributions from Roman Hemby and Khobie Martin, who put up 53 and 42 yards respectively.

Mendoza’s younger brother Alberto, who is a backup QB at Indiana, shared how important a homecoming game in Miami is to the family.

“We have definitely talked about it,” he said. “We saw Miami in the playoffs, we’re like, ‘Wow, play Miami in Miami’. We knew we were going to make it, but just knowing that we might see them, Miami at Miami, is just kind of crazy because everyone from my hometown are Miami fans. It will mean a lot.”

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College Football Playoff Final:
National Championship Game
Hard Rock Stadium, Miami

Miami vs Indiana

Monday 19th January 2026