Ohio State vs. Indiana: The Big Ten Rivalry That Could Define the 2025 Playoff

Four weeks from Sunday, the College Football Playoff’s official 2025 12-team bracket will be set. Technically, that’s a lot of time for things to change in the college football universe.

For example, it’s more than enough time for a couple more SEC coaches to get whacked. Don’t say we didn’t warn you, Mike Stoops. And, hey, Jeff Lebby: You’ve already had a whole 23 months and 21 games to turn around Mississippi State. We don’t care that your final three regular-season games are against No. 5 Georgia, No. 19 Missouri and No. 7 Ole Miss. Get busy winnin’ or get busy dyin’.

It’s also enough time for two “mid” coaches like Maryland’s Mike Locksley and South Carolina’s Shane Beamer to exchange more unpleasantries about how the other does business. They have sparred for years — and are in the midst of another battle.

In case you missed it, Maryland owns a commitment from Baltimore native Zion Elee, the 2026 recruiting class’ best pass rusher (Locksley always has recruited well in the DMV) and No. 2 prospect overall. But Elee took a recent visit to South Carolina, which inspired Locksley to declare this:

“Those guys, you know they get paid to go take those trips, now,” Locksley said on a local radio show. “Why would I be mad for Zion to make 5 to 10 grand to go down to South Carolina? …”

That offended Beamer’s honor — something offends his honor every week, it seems — so he answered back.

"Really disappointing to see a fellow head coach say that," Beamer said according to 247 Sports. "Disappointing for someone to insinuate something when the only violation that was committed was him commenting on a prospective student-athlete publicly."

Yikes. It’d be great to see them keep at it, but Locksley might not have a job in three weeks and Beamer could pay the same price for losing five games in a row — all to ranked teams. The fifth should be today when the Gamecocks visit No. 3 Texas A&M.

It’s also enough time for former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald to reveal his next gig. With so many jobs open — and Fitzgerald feeling “very vindicated” after his lawsuit against Northwestern was settled with a hefty payday — he’ll have his pick of schools. But which one? Here’s a wild stab in the dark: Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is 70 years old. Fitzgerald’s son, Ryan, is a redshirting freshman quarterback at Iowa, and Fitz long has respected Ferentz. It says here Ferentz rides off into the sunset after 27 years as the boss with the knowledge Fitzgerald will run the Hawkeyes in a similar defense-first fashion.

OK, we’ve established that four weeks is a long time for crazy college football stuff to happen. But it’s not enough time to change our view on this:

No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Indiana are going to romp through the rest of their regular-season games and meet in the Big Ten championship game on Dec. 6. But no matter which team wins that clash in Indianapolis, the Buckeyes and Hoosiers deserve the top two seeds in the College Football Playoff so their rematch can’t happen any sooner than the CFP title game on Jan. 19 in Florida.

That’s how much better they are than everybody else in the sport. Look at the metrics. Jeff Sagarin’s ratings entering today’s games show Ohio State (97.21), Indiana (94.31) and Big Ten pal Oregon (93.00) as the nation’s top three.

Team Rankings has the same top three, but with the Buckeyes (32.8) and Hoosiers (32.5) two strides ahead of the Ducks (27.4). There’s a bigger difference between Nos. 2 and 3 than Nos. 3 and 9.

You can book it: It’ll be Ohio State vs. Indiana for Big Ten supremacy on Dec. 6 — then Buckeyes vs. Hoosiers again for the national crown 44 days later at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.