Why the 2025 National Title Game Signals a Shift in College Football

The changes to college football over the last five years are perhaps the most profound the sport’s seen since the first decade of the 1900s. And while the 2025 season’s National Championship Game reflects the most dramatic off-field changes — ostensible professionalism, open transfer markets and a multiple-team tournament — Indiana and Miami are also reflective of on-field change.

Since the return from the COVID-19 pandemic, defense has reigned supreme around college football. The era of grassketball with games so high-scoring, they’d send shivers down former Virginia hoops coach Tony Bennett’s spine, is gone.

Now, that’s not to suggest four- and five-receiver sets and variations of the spread are about to go the way of the wishbone or Wing-T. National finalist and front-runner Indiana heads into its showdown with Miami averaging 42.6 points per game, second-most in the Football Subdivision, for example.

But the Hoosiers also rank second in the FBS in scoring defense with a yield of 11.1 points per game. The Hurricanes are not far behind, either, surrendering 14 points per game to rank fifth in the FBS.

Of the top five scoring defenses in 2025, four qualified for the Playoff with Ohio State (No. 1, 9.3 points per game) and Texas Tech (No. 3, 11.8) joining Indiana and Miami. And both the Buckeyes and Red Raiders had their final totals inflated a touch with losses to Miami and Oregon.

Speaking of Oregon, despite the 56 points the Ducks gave up in the national semifinal loss to Indiana at the Peach Bowl, they will finish top 12 nationally in scoring defense for the campaign. They’re part of the Playoff majority — 75 percent, nine of 12 teams — that were No. 20 or better in points allowed.

Compare that to the last pre-COVID-19 era four-team Playoff; the quartet of semifinalists with LSU, Clemson, Ohio State and Oklahoma had two top-ranked defenses. However, LSU and Oklahoma ranked No. 31 and No. 64 in points allowed.

That season was more so defined by offense, with all four ranking in the top six for points scored per game. In contrast, this year’s field has only Indiana among the top six of scoring offense.

Rounding out this postseason’s collection of elite defenses, Oklahoma, Georgia and James Madison are all No. 13 or better; Alabama checks in at No. 20 despite the Crimson Tide’s downturn from the Nick Saban years.

With regard to the Saban dynasty, his national championship–winning teams in Tuscaloosa from 2009 through 2020 lorded over college football at the zenith of the game’s offensive revolution. The Tide rolled with imposing defense, suggesting that side of the ball has indeed always been king.

Defense wins championships didn’t become an oft-repeated cliché for nothing, after all.

But in 2018 before his first season at Oregon, the program perhaps most singularly responsible for taking uptempo, spread offense from niche to the industry standard, current Miami coach Mario Cristobal held court at lunch during Pac-12 media day.

Among the topics Cristobal touched on was Saban’s embrace of the spread offense at Alabama, just a few years after the influential coach campaigned publicly to legislate tempo out of the sport.

Cristobal cited the 2013 Crimson Tide’s loss to Oklahoma in that season’s Sugar Bowl, when then-Sooners offensive coordinator Josh Heupel oversaw an attack Alabama’s blue-chip defense couldn’t stop.

The loss prompted Saban to hire Lane Kiffin as offensive coordinator — and Kiffin’s former Ole Miss rode explosive offense into this season’s Playoff as the outlier among a class of defensive-oriented teams.

Saban-coached Alabama teams were the quintessential example of why spread and hurry-up offenses first came to Div. I football in the first place; after decades of powerful run games and physical defenses dominating, programs that routinely struggled to compete needed to find an edge where they could gain it.

The proliferation of spread attacks reaching such a point that even the program most synonymous with a defensive-focused approach adopted it — and did it better than anyone, as evidenced in the Steve Sarkisian–coordinated Tide attack of 2020 that put up 48.5 points per game.

Such offenses exploited mismatches, forcing bigger and slower defenses to try matching up with speedy receivers from sideline to sideline. The result of such attacks becoming the norm rather than an outlier meant defenses adjusted their personnel accordingly, with dime and quarter becoming base formations.

In the cyclical world of football, the next logical chess move was countering speed with strength; returning to old-school offensive philosophies. Yes, Indiana puts up points in buckets overall this season, but does so with a balanced attack that emphasizes power.

Never was this more evident than in the offensive Most Valuable Player of the Rose Bowl blowout of Alabama going to the Hoosiers’ front line.

Likewise, Miami makes its return to the national championship spotlight with an offense that features as its arguably best player being tackle Francis Mauigoa. It’s reminiscent of the last national title–winning Hurricanes team when tackle Bryant McKinnie garnered not-insignificant Heisman Trophy buzz.

And, as part of complementing an offense constructed on punishing the opponent with physicality and a balance of run and pass, premier defenses are similarly beefed up. Miami heads into the title tilt behind the defensive-line duo of Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor; Indiana rolls with Tyrique Tucker and Aiden Fisher in the front seven, playing with a demeanor as salty as their head coach, Curt Cignetti.

It’s old-school, smash-mouth football, and it’s the prevailing brand of the game in 2026.