Michigan and Washington will play for the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday after thrilling finishes on New Year’s Day returned a sense of normalcy to an otherwise chaotic college bowl season.

One of Washington’s defensive backs, Elijah Jackson, knocked away a potential game-winning touchdown pass on the final play to preserve a 37-31 win over the Texas Longhorns in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Michigan beat Alabama in overtime in the Rose Bowl, 27-24, when the Wolverines defense smothered the Crimson Tide quarterback, Jalen Milroe, on fourth down at Michigan’s 2-yard line. Running back Blake Corum gave Michigan its lead with a 17-yard touchdown run on the first possession of the overtime.

Washington (14-0) now gets a chance to win its first national championship since 1991, when the Huskies shared the title with the Miami Hurricanes, while Michigan (14-0) makes its first appearance in a CFP championship game after losing in the semifinals each of the past two seasons. The Wolverines last shared the national championship in 1997, with the Nebraska Cornhuskers, by a vote of the Associated Press poll. Monday’s championship game is set for NRG Stadium at Houston.

“It’s everything that we worked for, everything that we prepared for, everything we trained and strained for,” Michigan’s head coach, Jim Harbaugh, said in his press conference after the game. “The team was just not going to be denied.”

With the CFP expanding to 12 teams next year, this was the final four-team format. The white-knuckle finishes between top-ranked teams loaded with their best players offered a welcome contrast to the rest of the college bowl season, when the transfer portal, the impending National Football League draft, and concerns over injuries prompted a multitude of players to skip the bowl games. Instead of presenting the lineups featured during the regular season, coaches filled holes with second- and third-string players. The Orange Bowl offered a prime example.

Sixth-ranked Georgia crushed a depleted Florida State team, 63-3, for the largest margin of victory in bowl history. The Seminoles came into the game unbeaten, but after not being selected for the CFP, many of Florida State’s best players opted not to play in the Orange Bowl. 

According to ESPN, Florida State played without its top two quarterbacks, top two receivers, two key running backs, two linebackers, three starting defensive backs, the starting tight end, and three starting defensive linemen. They were among nearly 30 players who sat out the game for FSU because of opt-outs, injuries, and transfers.

In the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl where Notre Dame defeated Oregon State, 40-8, as many as 17 starters from the two schools didn’t play in El Paso, Texas, where Irish quarterback Steve Angeli made his first start. Many of the bowls felt more like an early spring game for next season.

Minutes after watching his team demolish Florida State, Georgia coach Kirby Smart criticized the plethora of opt-outs. “People need to see what happened tonight and they need to fix this,” Mr. Smart said. “It needs to be fixed. It’s very unfortunate that they have a good football team and a good football program and they’re in the position they’re in.”

The Seminoles were angry after being left out of the CFP despite compiling an unbeaten regular season with an Athletic Coast Conference Championship.  The problem should be solved by the expansion to 12 teams next year. Key athletes opting out of bowl games will continue to be a problem as they look for a better situation as soon as the regular season concludes.

The NCAA transfer portal, created in 2018, allows players to put their name in an online database and essentially be recruited again by another team. The process was amended in 2021 to allow Division 1 football, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s ice hockey, and baseball to utilize the portal once without sitting out a year after the transfer. The 30-day portal for football closed on Tuesday. Once in the portal players can take as much time as they need to join another team as long as they meet admissions and academic requirements.

The portal was initially conceived as a way for student-athletes to transfer to other schools due to a coaching change, lack of playing time, or a necessity for a new environment. Now in addition to those reasons, student-athletes are transferring in search of more NIL money. Student-athletes can be paid for their name, image, and likeness. The bigger the school, the more NIL money is likely to be available. According to several knowledgeable sources, a quarterback at a Power 5 school can command from $500,000 to $1 million in NIL money.

Hundreds of players at every position entered the portal this year with many having already committed to other teams. The process left Florida State coach Mike Norvell’s calling December “the most challenging month” of his coaching career after not being selected for the CFP and watching his team decimated by transfers, opt-outs, and injuries.

“There were hard choices by a lot of young men on our team,” Mr. Norvell said in Miami, adding, “I hate I didn’t get one more (game) with them.”

FSU’s football outlook improved on Monday when quarterback DJ Uiagalelei announced his intentions to play his senior season with the Seminoles after transferring from Oregon State where he passed for 2,638 yards and 21 touchdowns in 2023.