SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - When Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was growing up as a fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide, crowning a champion in major college football was all about polls and bowls, and the best teams often never got a chance to settle it on the field.
"It'd be pretty cool to go back in time and take some of those teams, get the top four and kind of do the playoff," Swinney said during Friday's final Fiesta Bowl news conference with Ohio State coach Ryan Day. "And that's what we have. We have a really cool setup in college football."
With the College Football Playoff, national champions are now undisputed - blips such as Central Florida's undefeated 2017 season notwithstanding - and more often than not, the title game has produced intrigue and thrills. What the playoff has lacked in its first five years is drama on semifinal day, with only two of those 10 games decided by one score and their average margin a whopping 21 points.
The Fiesta Bowl has a chance to buck the trend. Swinney's No. 3 Tigers (13-0), seeking their second straight national title and third in four years, take on Day's No. 2 Buckeyes (13-0) in a rare CFP semifinal that feels like it could be a championship game. Saturday's matchup in Glendale is set for 8 p.m. EST and follows the 4 p.m. Peach Bowl semifinal between No. 1 LSU (13-0) and No. 4 Oklahoma in Atlanta, with ESPN televising both games and the winners meeting Jan. 13 in New Orleans.
Clemson has won 28 straight games, the nation's longest active streak. The Tigers are No. 1 in the nation in points allowed and No. 4 in points scored.
Ohio State has won 19 straight games, second only to Clemson. The Buckeyes are No. 1 in the nation in scoring and No. 3 in points allowed.
Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, right, looks to pass during the second half of the Big Ten title game against Wisconsin on Dec. 7 in Indianapolis. / AP photo AJ Mast"When you look at the guys on both sides of the ball on both teams, you've got a lot of NFL players who will be playing for a long time," Day said. "It will be fun to see those guys playing against each other and competing. But you talk about a collection of power, speed, strength, you kind of look on both sides. It's there.
"Clemson, they're strong, they're powerful, they're tough. They're fast. They have speed. We have speed. They have a really good quarterback. We have a really good quarterback. They have a really good running back; we have a really good running back. It goes back and forth. It will be fun to watch."
Swinney, of course, loves the playoff with Clemson making its fifth straight appearance as Atlantic Coast Conference champion. The Tigers have reached the CFP title game three times, all against Alabama, and the two wins against the Crimson Tide put them on equal footing as college football's current gold standard.
Ohio State has been just below that tier of two. The Buckeyes won the first CFP title to cap the 2014 season, making a run as the No. 4 seed, and this will be their third playoff appearance.
Their second such venture did not go well. Clemson beat Ohio State 31-0 in the 2016 season's Fiesta Bowl, maybe the low point in what has been one of the great runs in the history of the storied Big Ten program. In the past nine years under coach Urban Meyer and Day, the Buckeyes went 96-9 with four conference titles.
"I know that we're always in the conversation year in and year out, and have been since (the playoff) started," said Day, the former Buckeyes offensive coordinator who took over after last season. "Some of the things that have happened in the past have nothing to do with this team, with this coaching staff."
Day's first season as Meyer's replacement has unleashed a different kind of Ohio State offense featuring a different kind of Ohio State quarterback. Justin Fields arrived as a transfer from Georgia with all the best talents of recent Buckeyes quarterbacks rolled into one 6-foot-3, 225-pound package.
A former five-star recruit, Fields can sling it like Dwayne Haskins and run it like J.T. Barrett - except he might be better at both. Although he has been nursing a sore left knee going into this game, Fields has 40 touchdown passes and 10 touchdown runs and has thrown just one interception.
Clemson's Trevor Lawrence, a Georgia native like Fields, already has a national championship. Last year, he became the first freshman quarterback since 1985 to lead his team to a title.
For as good as the Buckeyes and Tigers have been this season, both have tried to position themselves as disrespected underdogs.
Nobody is really buying any of it. For the first time, a CFP semifinal features a matchup of superpowers.
"It is a national championship game," Swinney said, "because if we don't win it, we ain't going to the national championship game."