What humbly started 149 days ago in Dublin, Ireland, ends Monday night at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.
After 15 weeks, plus a round of conference championships and three playoff rounds, Indiana and Miami meet to settle a score, with the winner standing atop the world of college football – the National Champion of the 2025 season.
Along the way, we’ve had immense chaos – a hallmark, in this topsy-turvy sport – and an in-season (and in-playoff) coaching carousel unlike any other.
But Monday is about one trophy, and two programs – each trying to pen the perfect ending to a storybook season.
Either way, one of those fairy tales will come to completion, whether it’s the Hoosiers’ impossible flip of fate, from doormat to dominant, behind a head coach who is brash enough to have believed it was all possible, or the return of The U to its place at the forefront – a position it grasped with regularity for a 20-plus year span between the early-1980s and early-2000s.
Settle in and enjoy it, because it’s a long wait between now and August, when the whole thing begins rolling again.
Without further delay, five storylines for the National Championship:
Can Miami’s defence get the best of Fernando Mendoza?
In two playoff games, Mendoza has thrown three more touchdown passes than he has incompletions. Yes, you read that right – incompletions, not interceptions. In wins over Alabama and Oregon, Mendoza was a combined 31-of-36 for 369 yards with eight touchdown passes.
By now, we’re familiar with the pedigree of this year’s Heisman winner. But in a season that lacked “moments”, Mendoza has stood out as the far-and-away best player in the sport and has affirmed it in each of Indiana’s last three games. After outlasting Julian Sayin and Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship, he’s been downright clinical in the two games that punched the Hoosiers’ ticket to the title game.
Against Miami, he’ll have to deal with Akheem Mesidor and Rueben Bain, who had their way with Marcel Reed and Sayin in the first two rounds, and though Trinidad Chambliss managed 274 yards in the Fiesta Bowl, those did come on 37 passing attempts.
To this point in the playoffs, opposing quarterbacks have combined to throw just two touchdowns with four interceptions against the Hurricanes, and they’ve been sacked a total of 13 times – seven-and-a-half of which have been credited to Mesidor and Bain, who have also combined for 40 pressures.
Miami is fifth-best amongst FBS teams this season in points allowed per game (14.0), up from 69th in 2024, when it allowed an average of 25.3.
Mendoza faced the Hurricanes last season when he was with Cal, passing for 285 yards and two touchdowns in a last-second, 39-38 loss – a game in which the Golden Bears held a 25-point lead late in the third quarter. Mendoza was just 11-of-22 that night, but did complete four passes of 50 yards or more.
This time around, Mendoza is much better – and has a deeper supporting cast, in addition – but so too are the Hurricanes. Last year, Miami’s defence was its undoing. This season, it’s the team’s strength.
Mesidor and Bain should have a physical advantage over Indiana’s veteran offensive line, and they’ll be eager to get after Mendoza. Even with his remarkable efficiency, there has been one troubling flaw – dating back to the Ohio State game, Mendoza has been sacked seven times, and he put the ball on the ground twice in the Peach Bowl against Oregon.
Will we get the best or the worst of Carson Beck?
Beck was merely relied upon to play cleaner than his counterparts in the first two playoff rounds, and he did just that.
In wins over Texas A&M and Ohio State, he was turnover-free, albeit with just 241 total passing yards and one touchdown. Reed and Sayin, in contrast, passed for a combined 522 yards against Miami, but also accounted for five total turnovers.
All this isn’t to say Beck isn’t capable or willing to dial it up.
Against Chambliss and Ole Miss, he answered the call, throwing for 268 yards – including 49 on Miami’s final drive – with two passing touchdowns and another on the ground, and his scoring scramble with 18 seconds remaining proved to be the difference in Miami’s 31-27 win.
And Beck was at his best this year in the Hurricanes’ late-season playoff push, passing for 1,125 yards and 10 touchdowns with just one interception in Miami’s four November wins.
Carson Beck scored the second-latest go-ahead touchdown in regulation in College Football Playoff history with 18 seconds remaining 🔥 pic.twitter.com/rAux9hnuG3
— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) January 9, 2026
But in each of the past two seasons, he’s suffered near-critical midseason swoons – spells that nearly cost his teams berths in the playoffs.
In 2024 at Georgia, it was a six-game stretch that included 12 interceptions, including a combined six in losses to Alabama and Ole Miss. This year, the Hurricanes have committed just 14 turnovers in 15 games, but six of them came on Beck interceptions in their only two losses – against Louisville in mid-October, and two weeks later against SMU.
All that said, the formula is simple – if Beck limits his mistakes, Miami’s chances of winning increase exponentially. Against Indiana, he’ll have to keep up with Mendoza, who’s capable of hanging a crooked number if he ends up getting the best of Mesidor, Bain and Miami’s defensive front.
For Beck, it’s a career-defining opportunity.
At one point, he was the projected top pick in NFL Draft, only to be cast away by Georgia after that up-and-down final year in Athens, which also happened to end with a devastating elbow injury in the SEC Championship. Now, he’s back on the big stage, chasing his third national title – and his first as a starter – with a chance to reaffirm his status as a bona fide next-level prospect.
Mark Fletcher Jr. has been the best running back in the playoffs, but Indiana’s ground attack is just as potent
Miami’s ability to match points with Indiana – or at least, control the tempo offensively – doesn’t rely solely on Beck.
Fletcher Jr. has emerged as this postseason’s most reliable back, rushing for a combined 395 yards in the Hurricanes’ three wins, while serving as the single-biggest factor in their ability to hold a time-of-possession advantage in each. Against Ole Miss in the Fiesta Bowl, Fletcher Jr. rushed for 133 yards on 22 carries and Miami possessed the ball for 41 minutes and 22 seconds, which amounted to 68.9 per cent of the game.
Fletcher’s season has run parallel to Beck’s in that it’s had its own share of ups and downs.
He was electrifying to start the year, with 388 yards and five touchdowns in four wins out of the gate, but was mostly silent from October onward — including in the loss against Louisville, where rushed for just 18 yards on eight carries. But in the playoffs, Fletcher’s 420 yards from scrimmage are the most in college football and 109 more than the runner up, Kewan Lacy of Ole Miss.
In the event Indiana needs to lean on its running game to stay on schedule, it can securely lean on its own backfield — one that features a potent two-headed monster in seniors Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black.
Both have carried the ball 10 times or more in each of the past three games, and they’ve combined to get in the end zone four times over the past two. Hemby eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark this season in the Rose Bowl against Alabama and Black can get over that hump on Monday if he rushes for 39 yards or more.
Can a true freshman leave his stamp on the National Championship for the second straight year?
Jeremiah Smith took over for Ohio State in the playoffs last year, catching 19 passes for 381 yards and five touchdowns in the Buckeyes’ four-game march to a national title, including 88 yards and a score in the championship against Notre Dame.
This season, another true freshman has a chance to leave an indelible mark on college football’s biggest stage.
Malachi Toney isn’t like Smith — not in terms of size (he’s listed at 5-foot-11 and 188 pounds, which is four inches shorter and 35 pounds lighter than Smith), nor in terms of usage.
Smith is arguably the best perimeter receiver in college football, and Toney does most of his damage in the slot, including against Ole Miss, when he took a fourth-quarter swing pass from Beck and bolted 36 yards to the end zone -– a score that gave Miami a 24-19 lead with five minutes remaining and proved crucial in its eventual win.
Toney’s 99 catches this season are the most ever by a true freshman in ACC history, and he served as far more than just a safety net for Beck. His two best receiving games of the season (12 catches, 146 yards and 13 catches, 126 yards) came in Miami’s final two games of the regular season, and he scored the lone touchdown on a jet sweep in the Hurricanes’ 10-3 win over Texas A&M in the first round of the playoffs.
He’s not the only pass-catcher who could be hugely impactful in the championship.
Elijah Sarratt and Omar Cooper Jr. have been stalwarts all season for Indiana, combining 28 touchdown receptions, including 15 from Sarratt, which is best in the nation.
Charlie Becker emerged as Mendoza’s favourite downfield threat late in the season, and had touchdown catches of 21 and 36 yards against Alabama and Oregon. Becker played exclusively on special teams in 2024 as a freshman and had only six catches in the Hoosiers’ first eight games this season, but has 24 for 509 yards since, including a crucial 33-yard grab late against Ohio State that extended Indiana’s final possession and helped put the Big Ten Championship on ice.
Indiana can do something that only one team has done before – and it happened 131 years ago
The Hoosiers are currently one of seven teams at the highest level of college football to go 15-0 in a single season, and can join the 1894 Yale Bulldogs as the only 16-game winners if they beat Miami on Monday.
That Yale team outscored its opponents by a combined score of 485-13 and pitched 13 shutouts, with notable wins over programs like Orange Athletic Club and Volunteer Athletic Association.
It’s been over 125 years 😳
With a win in the CFP National Championship game, the Hoosiers would join Yale in 1894 as the only teams in major college football history to finish 16-0. pic.twitter.com/MNIfwa8Bmb
— ESPN Insights (@ESPNInsights) January 12, 2026
By now, we’re all familiar with the story surrounding Indiana.
Prior to Curt Cignetti’s arrival two winters ago, it was the losingest program in NCAA history (a distinction that now belongs to Northwestern). The level of futility was staggering: between the turn of the century and 2023, the Hoosiers lost 63 more games than they won. In the four seasons before last year, they won a grand total of 15 games. And until beating Alabama on New Year’s Day, Indiana hadn’t won a single bowl game since 1991, when it shut out Baylor 24-0 in the renowned Copper Bowl (now the Rate Bowl).
Since Cignetti came along, the Hoosiers are 26-2, have won two bowl games, and can etch their place in history with the first National Championship in program history if they manage to beat the Hurricanes.
The GOAT conversation is unavoidable, and it’s come more and more to the forefront with each passing week. The 2019 LSU Tigers, behind Joe Burrow’s historic Heisman season? The USC Trojans of 2004, with Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush? And Miami’s 2001 title team that was loaded with future NFL stars at each position?
They all might end up taking a backseat to Cignetti’s Hoosiers when this is all said and done.
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