CFP National Championship preview: Keys to victory for Indiana, Miami - ESPN

The 2025 college football season was odd from the start.

Texas quarterback Arch Manning began the season as the least statistically proven Heisman favorite of all time and never came particularly close to (unreasonable) expectations. The sport's most proven entities in a year of change were Clemson (preseason No. 4) and Penn State (No. 2); the Tigers began the season 1-3 and only ever rebounded so much, while the Nittany Lions lost six straight midseason games and fired head coach James Franklin.

Sure, defending national champion Ohio State spent most of the season ranked No. 1, but there was a steady undercurrent of uniqueness. Indiana — which began the season as the losingest major program in the history of college football — was the only team to get to 13-0. Texas Tech hadn't won more than eight games in a season since 2009 but rode a brilliant transfer class to 12 wins and its first Big 12 title. Vanderbilt won 10 games for the first time.

(Even the smaller-school ranks dealt with usurpers and choppy waters. A seemingly untouchable North Dakota State team lost in the FCS round of 16, and the Bison's conqueror, Illinois State, which had just a 0.3% chance of reaching the title game based on pregame projections, came within inches of the national title. In Division III, Wisconsin-River Falls, which suffered a losing season every year from 2001 to 2019, upset powerhouse North Central to win the crown.)

Now comes the payoff. In the last college football game of the season Monday night, preseason No. 10 Miami, which lost two of three in October to seemingly fall out of contention for a College Football Playoff bid, will face preseason No. 20 Indiana for the national title. The former began the season with national title