Notre Dame, Ohio State and the Southern flavor drive two Midwest CFP finalists

ATLANTA – Georgia native Anthonie Knapp knew Notre Dame was in Indiana when the offensive lineman decided to take a recruiting visit. Exactly where in Indiana?

“I didn’t know the nearest towns?” said the freshman offensive tackle from Roswell, Ga., who grew up a Bulldogs fan.

That’s better than his teammate Jaylen Sneed, who grew up in South Carolina. “I literally asked (head coach Marcus) Freeman on the first call, where is Notre Dame anyway? And he said, ‘Oh, we’ve got a lot to teach you,'” Sneed said with a smile Saturday during the College Football Playoff’s national championship media day .

Thanks to Knapp, Sneed and several Notre Dame and Ohio State players ranging from contributors to stars, the first college football title game in the entire Midwest is not lacking in Southern flavor.

The Irish and Buckeyes meet Monday night to decide the first 12-team playoff in Atlanta, the heart of the Southeastern Conference, and while there won’t be an SEC team in sight, plenty of players from nearby have helped Ohio State and Notre Dame reach this point.

The two title games feature 33 players drawn directly from high schools in SEC territory, which stretches from Columbia, SC, to Austin, Texas; six transfers from SEC schools — including Ohio State All-American Caleb Downs — three transfers who grew up in SEC states; and 13 other players from SEC-adjacent states North Carolina and Virginia.

“I feel like (football) is bigger down here than it is up north,” said Notre Dame linebacker Jaiden Ausberry, who grew up in Baton Rouge, La., and whose father works in LSU’s athletic department. “It’s something you’re really just born into. It’s your life. And I really just feel like there’s more emphasis on that from a younger age. So people exercise more. They care about it, care more about it.”

The rise of the SEC as the king conference in college football over the past 25 years has been directly tied to the growth of the Sun Belt states and the cultural, emotional and financial commitment people in those states have placed on high school and college football.

“It’s unbelievable the amount of time and effort and good coaching that goes into Georgia football,” said Ohio State center Seth McLaughlin, an Alabama transfer and Georgia high school product who missed the second half of the Buckeyes’ season with a torn Achilles tendon. “It’s probably the same with Texas, probably the same with Florida, but there’s just so much time and resources dedicated to it.”

Recruiting rankings are far from perfect, but they tell a pretty clear story: The 12 SEC states have 194 players rated as a four- or five-star prospect in the 2025 class by 247Sports. The 14 states in the Big Ten’s coast-to-coast footprint have 107 four- or five-star recruits. But that includes newly annexed California, which leads the Big Ten states with 32 blue-chippers. And Texas (49), Florida (38) and Georgia (38) all have more blue-chippers in the 2025 recruiting class than California.

McLaughlin attended Buford High School, a powerhouse in Georgia that was run similarly to a college program.

“As an SEC guy, I always thought the SEC was supreme and just all-encompassing of what college football should be. And I think the new era of college football has changed the landscape dramatically,” said he. “I still think the SEC was a much better conference up until the last few years, but this year it’s different.”

SEC schools have won 13 national titles since 2006, and Clemson (two) and Florida State (one) of the ACC have combined for three more.

For a long time, Ohio State’s 2014 championship was the only outlier in a decade and a half of southern school dominance. Last year, archrival Michigan snapped the streak and beat Washington in the title game — the first not to feature an SEC team since those Buckeyes beat Oregon in the first four-team CFP final.

It’s now two straight years without an SEC team, the first time that’s happened since 2004 and ’05, when USC faced Oklahoma and then Texas in the BCS Championship Games. Texas and Oklahoma were then in the Big 12. The Ohio State-Notre Dame matchup ensures that college football’s national champion will be a northern school in consecutive years for the first time since 1976-77, when Pitt and Notre Dame won it all.

Programs looking to compete at the highest level of college football these days must find ways to tap into the South’s deep talent pool, no matter how far away their campuses are from it. Southern schools still do fine protecting their turf, but the Buckeyes helped set the course for where the sport is today.

The 2012 arrival of Ohio native Urban Meyer, who won two national championships as the head coach at Florida, changed the way the Buckeyes recruited to think more nationally, targeting the very best players regardless of where they came from. Pipelines were built to Florida and Texas and throughout the South.

The 2014 title team featured quarterback JT Barrett of Texas, defensive end Joey Bosa and linebacker Raekwon McMillan of Florida, safety Vonn Bell of Georgia and running back Ezekiel Elliott of Missouri.

Elliott came out of St. Louis, which is not traditional SEC territory, but he had offers from across the country before choosing Ohio State. Barrett never got the Texas offer he dreamed of growing up in Wichita Falls, and Ohio State beat out LSU for him. Bosa had family ties to Ohio State.

“But I think a guy like Raekwon and Vonn Bell, who didn’t really have those ties, to go into the South and beat the SEC teams, we broke through,” said Mark Pantoni, Ohio State’s longtime general manager , who followed Meyer. from Gainesville, Fla., to Columbus.

Ryan Day took over for Meyer in 2019 and kept the same recruiting plan in place.

Ohio State’s roster, which athletic director Ross Bjork said this year required more than $20 million to build, is the most talented in the country. The Buckeyes’ top offensive lineman: Donovan Jackson, five-star recruit from Texas. Their best defensive back: Downs, a five-star recruit from Georgia who transferred in from Alabama. Their dynamic duo at running back: TreVeyon Henderson, a five-star recruit out of Virginia, and Quinshon Judkins, an Ole Miss transfer who went to high school in Alabama. And then there’s receiver Jeremiah Smith, the 19-year-old prodigy from just outside of Miami.

“I visited Texas A&M, the University of Texas, Alabama, and Ohio State was the only Midwestern school I visited,” Jackson said. “I was absolutely convinced I was going to commit to a school in the South. But when I visited (Ohio State) in 2019, it was the only place I felt at home.

Notre Dame, a small private Catholic university in South Bend, Ind., has always recruited nationally, heavily targeting private colleges, especially Catholic schools. Irish efforts to be more recruiting in the South in recent years have produced some hits and some misses. All-America safety Kyle Hamilton, of Atlanta, was the team’s best player from 2019 to 2021 before becoming a first-round draft pick of the Baltimore Ravens. In October, four-star quarterback Deuce Knight of Mississippi decommitted from Notre Dame to go to Auburn.

Under coach Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame has more aggressively recruited the type of blue-chip recruits that Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia routinely target.

“We recruited Caleb (Downs) before he went to Alabama,” Freeman said.

Freeman got a win over Alabama as running back Jeremiah Love (of St. Louis) picked the Irish over the Crimson Tide. Love has been Notre Dame’s most dynamic offensive player this season.

Knapp, who started the entire season at left tackle but will miss the title game with an ankle injury, is one of four players from Georgia, and first freshman cornerback Leonard Moore is one of six Irish players from Texas.

And, of course, quarterback Riley Leonard is from Fairhope, Ala., southeast of Mobile. He came to Notre Dame via transfer from Duke, but he also grew up a Fighting Irish fan, as his great-grandfather had played for Notre Dame in the 1940s.

To get Smith out of South Florida, Ohio State had to beat nearby Miami for the five-star receiver.

“The close to home narrative is a lie. The world has never been smaller,” Buckeyes receivers coach Brian Hartline said. “If they value football over getting a tan, then we’ll take those guys.”

The SEC is nowhere to be found in the final weekend of the college football season, but there’s still a good chance southern star power will determine who takes the national championship trophy back north.

(Photo: Sean Gardner/Getty Images)