Blue Bloods, Billion-Dollar Brands, and a Battle for College Football Supremacy

In the immediate aftermath of Jack Sawyer’s stunning scoop and score during the national semifinals of last year’s College Football Playoff, as half the crowd at AT&T Stadium screamed loudly enough to shake the television cameras and the other half stood frozen in disbelief, mouths collectively agape, it was difficult to parse through all the layers of deeper-seated meaning crammed into one unforgettable play.

Jack Sawyer #33 of Ohio State scores a touchdown after recovering a fumble in the fourth quarter against Texas during the Goodyear Cotton Bowl. (Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images)

On the surface, Sawyer had single-handedly manufactured the clinching touchdown in an enthralling victory over Texas that propelled Ohio State to the national championship game. His 83-yard fumble return extended the Buckeyes’ lead to double digits with 2:29 remaining at a juncture when the Longhorns were deep in the red zone and threatening to level the score. 

But there was so much more to that sequence, and to that game, that would help contextualize the enormity of such a high-stakes moment between Ohio State and Texas — two programs that are unquestionably among the sport’s biggest, richest and most recognizable brands, even though they’d combined to capture just a single national title in the preceding 20 years. 

For the Longhorns to maintain their blue-blood status despite only winning one championship since 1970 — thanks, Vince Young — speaks to how enmeshed Texas really is in the double helix of college football lore. The Buckeyes, meanwhile, could at least claim two national titles in the 21st century going into that January evening, but none since 2014. 

“We’ve been close,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said at SEC Media Days this summer. “We’ve been there. We’ve been knocking on the door [for] the last two years. But to go do that [and win it all], we need to take it one step at a time as we embark on the summit that we’re looking for. And that’s going to take great discipline.”

Texas’ quarterback that fateful night against Ohio State was none other than Quinn Ewers, a former No. 1 overall recruit in the country who began his career with the Buckeyes before transferring back home, swiftly elevating the Longhorns to consecutive CFP appearances for the first time in school history. Sawyer, meanwhile, was a former five-star prospect in his own right and a player who, on Feb. 3, 2019, became the first high schooler to commit to newly promoted head coach Ryan Day, igniting an otherworldly recruiting run for the Buckeyes that has since produced six consecutive classes ranked among the top five nationally. That Ewers and Sawyer had previously been roommates at Ohio State, albeit relatively briefly, offered yet another delicious plot twist. 

For Texas and Ohio State to have met with so much pomp and circumstance and talent seven months ago only to climb atop the rankings again in 2025, when they are Nos. 1 and 3, respectively, in the preseason AP poll and Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in the coaches poll, only reinforces the hypothesis that these two schools, perhaps more than any others, are uniquely positioned for long-term success in this new era of college football. An argument can be made that Saturday’s mouthwatering season opener at Ohio Stadium, where the Buckeyes will host the Longhorns in the premier game of Week 1 (noon ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app), is a matchup between the sport’s current and future preeminent powers.

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“If you look at last year’s game,” Sarkisian said at a news conference earlier this week, “26 players got drafted off the two teams into the NFL. If you include free agents, 32 players that were playing in that game a year ago are now playing in the NFL. And the fact that both teams are coming back as 1 and 2 in the country [in the coaches poll], I think speaks volumes to the quality of programs that both of us have, quite frankly.”

Once perennial contenders in the Big 12, a conference Texas seemingly co-chaired with rival Oklahoma, the Longhorns stormed the SEC last fall with a dream-like debut that flashed enough coaching guile, spending power and depth to send shock waves of staying power across the league. And the Buckeyes, long considered the class of the Big Ten on the shoulders of coaching icons like Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer and now Day, each of whom won a national title, swiftly responded to archrival Michigan’s championship ascension in 2023 by mobilizing with the kind of multi-comma fundraising and ruthless roster construction necessary to reach the pinnacle one year later, fortifying the program’s infrastructure along the way.

All of which serves as the necessary preamble for a game that is rather historic: It’s the first time since 1988 that the defending national champion will open against the preseason No. 1 team in the country. It’s just the second time in the history of the AP poll, which dates to 1950, that two teams ranked among the top three nationally will face each other in Week 1. And there are no teams in college football with better odds of winning this year’s national championship than the two that will face each other in Columbus on Saturday afternoon, according to DraftKings Sportsbook. 

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“I think it’s great for college football playing a game like this opening weekend,” Day said at a news conference earlier this week. “And we’re excited to play these guys. It’s rare that you would kind of play someone like this toward the end of the season [in 2024] and then start the regular season with them [in 2025], but here we are. And I think it’s going to give us a great barometer coming out of the first game.”

Though each team’s barometer will be subject to short-term change in the aftermath of Week 1 — with the winner likely anointed by the national media as the true national championship favorite — the long-ranging prospectuses for both could hardly be more encouraging, be that over the course of the 2025 marathon or in future seasons to come. There are plenty of reasons why the Wall Street Journal labeled Ohio State ($1.957 billion) and Texas ($1.897 billion) the two most valuable college football programs in the country earlier this year.

Beyond Ohio State’s perch as the defending national champion, its claim to be considered the strongest program in the sport begins with an incredible record of player acquisition and the capital needed to both procure and retain such talent year over year. When it comes to recruiting, where Day has entrenched himself as the only Big Ten coach capable of competing with traditional SEC powers on an annual basis, the Buckeyes enter 2025 ranked third behind Alabama and Georgia in the 247Sports Team Talent Composite, a metric that assesses the overall quality of each roster. And when it comes to the transfer portal, which provided Ohio State with a handful of high-level contributors ahead of its title-winning season last fall, the Buckeyes have ranked sixth, first and fifth in the country for average prospect score over the previous three years.

Head coach Ryan Day of the Ohio State Buckeyes enters Ohio Stadium prior to the Ohio State Spring Game. (Photo by Ben Jackson/Getty Images)

In the NIL and revenue-sharing world, stringing together those kinds of high school and transfer classes requires supreme organization between Ohio State’s personnel department and the financial arm of its athletic department, the blending of which can be largely credited to football general manager Mark Pantoni and athletic director Ross Bjork. Together, they were two of the leading figures behind last year’s aggressive financial packages that simultaneously retained the core of Day’s senior class and augmented it with an elite transfer portal haul that included quarterbacks Will Howard and Julian Sayin, center Seth McLaughlin, running back Quinshon Judkins and safety Caleb Downs, among others — all at the lofty price of “around $20 million,” as Bjork later acknowledged.

“I think it was four years ago that I was here when I said, ‘I think in about five years we won’t recognize what college football looks like,’” Day said earlier this summer at Big Ten Media Days. “I think that I was right off the field. I think I was wrong on the field. I think the product is as good as it’s ever been. I think the athletes are better than they’ve ever been.

“But off the field it’s just very, very different. It’s constantly changing. And so that’s where great alignment will be very, very important. I think we’re very well-positioned here at Ohio State moving forward.”

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The same is certainly true for Sarkisian’s outfit, which has increased its win total every year since he took over in 2021. Not only is Texas the only FBS team to make the CFP each of the last two years — it lost in the national semifinals both times — but the Longhorns are also coming off the winningest two-year stretch in school history, matching the 25 victories amassed by former coach Mack Brown in 2008-09. Yet not even Brown, who previously brought home a national title with Young in 2005, could guide Texas to No. 1 in the preseason AP poll, something the Longhorns had never experienced until this summer. Now, Sarkisian just needs a title of his own. 

To get this close to the summit, Sarkisian has authored a recruiting heater of his own that underwrote the program’s relatively seamless transition from the Big 12 to the SEC, even with an obvious jump in the level of competition. His last four recruiting classes have ranked fifth nationally in 2022, third in 2023, sixth in 2024 and first in 2025 to land at No. 4 overall in the Team Talent Composite. The current Longhorns’ roster is tied with Alabama for the most former five-star prospects in the country with 14, which is three more than Ohio State and nine more than any other Big Ten program. One of those recruits, former No. 1 overall prospect Arch Manning, makes his highly anticipated debut as the team’s starting quarterback this weekend.

Assembling such a group was anything but cheap. In April, a report from The Houston Chronicle said Texas was going to spend “between $35 million and $40 million” on its 2025 roster alone, widening eyes and loosening the jaws of college football fans across the country. And even though Sarkisian later rebuffed that number — he called it “irresponsible reporting” during an appearance on SiriusXM — nobody is questioning the depths of the Longhorns’ coffers relative to their competitors. Especially when Sarkisian’s weekly news conference is broadcast on the Longhorn Network, the school’s own television channel and streaming service, because everything is bigger in Texas. 

So, while there could certainly be viable cases for Georgia and Alabama as the preeminent powers in college football — after all, those two schools have combined to win eight of the last 16 national championships — it’s beginning to feel more and more like Texas’ moment in time, especially if Manning lives up to the hype. And there waiting for him and Sarkisian at the apex of college football are the Buckeyes of Ohio State. 

“Pretty epic matchup when you think about No. 1 versus No. 2 — in at least one of the two major polls — for the first game of the season,” Sarkisian said. “As much as I’m going to talk about, ‘the rankings don’t matter’ — [and] I believe that — but I think for college football, the fanfare, the excitement around this game, I think is great for our sport.”

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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