College football fans can kick off 2025 with three College Football Playoff games today, including Ohio State-Oregon in the Rose Bowl.
The Buckeyes and Ducks already met once this season in Big Ten play, with Oregon pulling out a 32-31 win back in October. Tonight’s rematch will decide a spot in the College Football Playoff semifinals, with the winner facing either Texas or Arizona State. We should have a barnburner on our hands in “The Granddaddy of Them All” in Pasadena.
The first Ohio State-Oregon matchup was decided by the slimmest possible margin, and ESPN’s Matchup Predictor thinks this one will be close as well.
As of this morning, the Buckeyes have a 53.7% chance of winning, compared to 46.3% for Oregon, according to ESPN Analytics. Meanwhile, on the betting line, Ohio State is a 2.5-point favorite.
Both head coaches were complimentary of each other’s teams in the pregame press conferences this week, with Ohio State’s Ryan Day praising Oregon as a team that is “very well-coached and they play very, very hard.”
“You turn on the film and you try to find weaknesses in an opponent. It’s really hard to find weaknesses in Ohio State,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said about the Buckeyes. “They have a lot of strengths. They’re really good on both sides of the ball and on special teams.”
This will be the fifth all-time meeting between these two programs, who also met in the 2010 Rose Bowl, with Ohio State winning 26-17. Five years later, they faced off again in the inaugural College Football Playoff Championship Game, also won by the Buckeyes.
Tonight’s game will kick off at 5 p.m. ET on ESPN. It’s the second of three College Football Playoff quarterfinal contests today, with Texas-Arizona State at 1 p.m. ET and Georgia-Notre Dame at 8:45 p.m. ET.
Related: Ohio State Star Issues Warning To Oregon Before Rose Bowl