Ohio State’s $20 Million Roster Proves To Be Too Much For Notre Dame In CFP Championship

Simply put, the Ohio State Buckeyes were the better team in their 34-23 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the College Football National Championship.

Notre Dame made it a close game, inching with one possession with a little over four minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. However, outside of a time-eating first drive that saw them race out to a 7-0 lead, the Buckeyes led throughout and controlled the entire game.

Prior to the Fighting Irish scoring 16 unanswered points in the second half after falling behind 31-7 midway through the third quarter, it became abundantly clear the difference in talent disparity between the two sides, with Notre Dame mustering just 11 yards on their four offensive drives following their first possession.

This isn’t exactly a surprise considering the Buckeyes have four surefire first-round draft prospects that will enter the 2025 NFL Draft in Emeka Egbuka, Donovan Jackson, Josh Simmons and Tyleik Williams. Meanwhile, the Fighting Irish’s one first-round draft prospect, cornerback Benjamin Morrison, was lost for the season back in October due to a hip injury.

But the game was a reflection of the current landscape of college football in the NIL and transfer portal era — it’s all about how much money you can rack up to recruit players to your school. This isn’t a criticism, it’s just a fact.

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The Role Of NIL In College Football

On one end of the spectrum, the Buckeyes possessed $20 million worth of players, reportedly the highest in college football. That includes star quarterback Will Howard, who won offensive MVP in the CFP National Championship after transferring from Kansas State. According to Pete Nakos of On3, Howard was paid a “million-dollar” NIL collective deal to transfer. It’s also worth noting that Notre Dame QB Riley Leonard had a similar payout after previously playing for the Duke Blue Devils.

The move obviously paid dividends for the Buckeyes, winning their first national championship in the Ryan Day era and their first since the 2014 season.

Day immediately shot down observers bringing up the NIL factor as the biggest reason for the Buckeyes’ championship following the game while speaking to the media.

“You can say whatever you want about people talked a lot about how much money guys were making in NIL and different things like that,” says Day. “That was just because NIL was available. The majority of our team came back. These guys have been here for a long time.”

On the other end of things, you had the Fighting Irish — despite their big name and storied program — build their program through tradition and culture in their recruiting. By comparison, Notre Dame players made about $1.7 million and the through a nonprofit collective set by alumnus Brady Quinn, which saw their players paid for their efforts through charity work. The collective earned $7.7 million in revenue as a whole.

“There’s just something about Notre Dame and I think it’s one of the great stories in all of college football and especially in this era of NIL and transfer portal,” New Orleans Saints great Drew Brees said in a one-on-one interview prior to the game. “I think Notre Dame has become one of the standards. Something that I think we should all look at and still recognize like what’s the most important thing in college football and that’s building a team and an identity and creating a standard and just living by that standard.”

Again, this isn’t to slight the Buckeyes. They didn’t break any rules, as they leveraged their high-earning status — they were the nation’s leader in fiscal revenue for 2022 — into recruiting the top players and emerging as a national champion.

But it’s indicative of the landscape of college football in which the top programs — the Buckeyes, the Texas Longhorns and the Oregon Ducks of the world — all happen to be some of the largest recipients of donor money combined with being schools that dole out to the most NIL money to athletes.

In fact, the Longhorns ranked No. 3 in donor money, the Ducks at No. 1 and the Buckeyes at No. 11. It’s no coincidence that the Buckeyes finished the season as national champs, the Longhorns finished in the final four and the Ducks entered the College Football Playoff as the No. 1 seed.

“Certainly Will was a huge addition, Caleb (Downs) was a huge addition, don't get me wrong,” says Day. “But when you hear that number, that doesn't mean a whole lot other than the fact that the market value for our guys in Columbus at Ohio State is pretty high. That's what it means. When that got tagged on us early, there was a lot of pressure put on our players.”

NIL And The Transfer Portal In College Football

We’re less than four years into the NIL and transfer portal era where college football feels no different than the NFL or any other pro league. While detractors and observers point towards wanting stricter rules in place to curtail top prospects from transferring constantly or to prevent programs from simply buying the top recruits, it remains to be seen if that will actually happen.

“I think we’re hopefully moving to a point where we put some guardrails around this NIL and transfer portal because I think it’s definitely gotten out of control,” says Brees.

The more likely immediate change might be to the College Football Playoff format, whether that’s expanding from 12 teams to even more or changing the long layoff in scheduling for the top seeds. The biggest argument is that it may have affected No. 1-seeded Oregon in their 41-21 dismantling at the hands of Ohio State in their first playoff game. The Ducks went nearly a full month without playing a game and lost to a team they had previously defeated back in October.

Whether people like it or not, the NIL era is in full effect. And while some may yearn for the days of not-so-long ago when programs were largely built on recruiting efforts through tradition and structure, those days are gone.

The best teams — and those that win championships — will largely look like the 2024 Buckeyes. Whoever spends the most money to bring in the top guys will end up on top.