COLUMBUS – No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Clemson play in the Fiesta Bowl on Saturday for a spot in the College Football Playoff national championship game.
2019 PlayStation Fiesta Bowl
(2) Ohio St. (13-0) vs. (3) Clemson (13-0)
State Farm Stadium, Glendale, Ariz.
Sat. Dec. 28 (8 p.m./ABC)
The unbeaten Buckeyes and undefeated Tigers make this semifinal feel like a championship game.
Clemson is the defending national champ riding a 28-game winning streak and with the nation’s top defense. Ohio State has won 19 straight and leads the country in scoring.
In the five-year history of the CFP, only two of the 10 semifinal games have been decided by fewer than 10 points.
Both teams are led by star sophomore quarterbacks from the state of Georgia.
Ohio State’s Justin Fields has accounted for 50 touchdowns but was nursing a sore left knee at the end of the season.
Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence led the Tigers to a national championship last year as a freshman.
Fields and Lawrence went to high school about 20 miles from each other in the suburbs northwest of Atlanta.
They have worked out since middle school with the same quarterback trainer, a former Pac-12 QB and full-time firefighter.
Lawrence and Fields were the Nos. 1 and 1a recruits in the class of 2018 and have been linked for most of their young lives despite never playing in the same football game.
The Tigers and Buckeyes have been in this spot before.
Clemson beat Ohio State 31-0 in a CFP semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl in 2016 on its way to its first national title under coach Dabo Swinney.