Ohio State came out on top in the national championship on Monday, outlasting a late Notre Dame comeback push to win 34-23. The game brought an end to the first edition of the expanded College Football Playoff, which features 12 teams vying for the title instead of four.

Now that the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff has concluded, it’s never too early to start looking ahead to the 2026 event. The expanded format brought plenty of surprises, thanks to the addition of eight more teams from the previous four-team model.

Now that it’s all over and the Ohio State Buckeyes are the college football national champions, it can be definitively said: Expanding the College Football Playoff worked.