AI-produced: generated with AI tools and reviewed by Ayokunle Spencer.
Ohio State entered the Goodyear Cotton Bowl on December 31, 2025 as the defending national champion, the No. 2 seed, and a nine-and-a-half point favorite. Miami, the No. 10 seed and a team many argued did not belong in the bracket, led 14-0 early in the second quarter and won 24-14.
The play everyone remembers
Early in the second quarter, Julian Sayin threw a quick screen. Keionte Scott had been reading it. He jumped the route, caught it clean, and had nothing but open field for 72 yards. It was his second pick-six of the season — both of his interceptions that year went back for touchdowns — and it made the score 14-0.
Sayin, a Heisman finalist, finished with two interceptions and was sacked five times. Miami's front had been the story of the Hurricanes' postseason, and it did not let up.
How a 14-point hole became fatal
Ohio State had not played since December 6, when it lost 13-10 to Indiana in a Big Ten Championship Game between undefeated teams. The Buckeyes received a first-round bye, then spent 25 days waiting. They came out flat.
The second half was better. Ohio State scored on its opening drive, then went 75 yards in 10 plays, with Sayin finding Jeremiah Smith for a 14-yard touchdown on fourth down. Smith finished with 157 yards on seven catches.
The 24 points Miami scored were the most Ohio State allowed all season.
The bye-week pattern
It was the fifth time in five tries that a team coming off a first-round bye lost its quarterfinal in the 12-team format. All four bye teams had lost the season before.
The streak reached six when Texas Tech lost the Orange Bowl the next day, then broke hours later when Indiana beat Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl — but the pattern is now a genuine strategic question for the format. Whether the reward for a top-four seed is worth the layoff has been argued in every offseason since.
Miami's method
Carson Beck went 19 of 26 for 138 yards and a touchdown, including a stretch of 13 consecutive completions that set a Cotton Bowl record in the game's 90th edition. Mark Fletcher Jr. ran 19 times for 90 yards against a defense that had been among the nation's best and was named offensive MVP. CharMar Brown scored the closing touchdown.
Nothing about it was spectacular. Miami ran the ball, converted downs, and let the defense do the rest — the same formula that had produced a 10-3 first-round win over Texas A&M.
Why it mattered
The win ended Ohio State's bid for back-to-back national titles. It sent Miami, the No. 10 seed, to a Playoff semifinal, and it was the program's most significant victory since the 2001 national championship season.
Mario Cristobal's sideline in Arlington included Michael Irvin, Ray Lewis and Jimmy Johnson. For a program that had spent two decades trading on a past it could not replicate, the Cotton Bowl was the night the present caught up.
Miami went on to beat Ole Miss in the Fiesta Bowl before losing the national championship to Indiana at home, 27-21.
Updated October 7, 2026: An earlier version said Miami led 14-0 before the end of the first quarter; both touchdowns came early in the second. It gave Jeremiah Smith six catches for 141 yards and called him a freshman; he had seven catches for 157 yards as a sophomore. It also described this as the sixth quarterfinal lost by a bye team; it was the fifth, and Texas Tech's loss the next day was the sixth. Details we could not verify, including a statistic on how long bye teams had led, have been removed.
