Miami-Notre Dame is Hard Rock’s first marquee game this season. It won’t be the last
All eyes will be on Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday night when the No. 10 Miami Hurricanes host the No. 6 Notre Dame Fighting Irish to open their 2025 season.
But it’s far from the only time South Florida will be in the college football spotlight this season.
In addition to being the site of the final of three top-10 matchups on the first full college football weekend of the season, Hard Rock Stadium will also play host to at least two College Football Playoff games this season. The Orange Bowl on Jan. 1 will be one of four quarterfinals in the 12-team playoff. Eighteen days later, the national championship game will take place in Miami Gardens on Jan. 19.
Moreover, if Miami makes the 12-team playoff field as a No. 5-8 seed, then the Hurricanes will also host a first-round game on Dec. 19 or 20, opening the possibility for Hard Rock Stadium to play a role in three of the four rounds of the playoffs.
Eric Poms, the CEO of the Orange Bowl Committee, will be keeping a close eye on all the action across the college football landscape as his team prepares for the playoff matchups it will be hosting in just over four short months.
This is Miami’s second time hosting the championship game in the CFP era after also be the site of the title game that capped the COVID-impacted 2020 season. The normal pomp and circumstance that comes with a title game was non-existent that year and capacity at Hard Rock Stadium for the game — Alabama beat Ohio State 52-24 — was limited to 20 percent.
“We’re looking forward to the next opportunity to bring the championship game back to the marketplace and we’re excited about it,” Poms said. “There will be a full stadium, and it’ll have all the electricity that goes with everything that is the College Football Playoff national championship game.”
That includes the potential for some Sunshine State flavor to run through South Florida.
Both the Hurricanes and the Florida Gators entered the season as preseason contenders to make the field. The Florida State Seminoles made noise on Saturday by upsetting No. 8 Alabama to begin the season.
No team has played on its home field for the championship game during the 11 years of the College Football Playoff; the closest instances were the University of Georgia playing in Atlanta for the 2018 national championship game (an overtime loss to Alabama) and LSU playing in New Orleans for the 2020 national championship game (a win over Clemson). The Hurricanes have the rare chance to be the first.
“We’re excited about no matter who emerges,” Poms said. “It’s tremendous excitement. It starts at the kickoff of the regular season. It builds as the regular season goes on, and now, with the first round leading to a quarterfinal, quarterfinals leading to the semifinals, semifinal to the championship game, you see this snowball getting bigger and bigger by the time you end up in the venue of the national championship game. The excitement’s palpable. It’s an incredible achievement for two teams, and if it so happens that whether it’s Miami, Florida, Florida State, UCF, USF, FIU, FAU that emerges, we’ll be ready for them, but a lot of football to be played.”
And in order to be ready, Poms and the rest of the host committee have been hard at work. When Miami was initially granted the 2021 title game, Poms reached out to the host committees for the title games in Tampa and Atlanta to get an idea of how they prepared for the event. Rodney Barreto and the Miami Super Bowl host committee were “a tremendous sounding board” as well, Poms said.
“Through all that, we were able to get a vision for how we would position the host committee for the 2021 and now 2026 national championship game,” Poms said. “It’s comprised of a tri-county platform of community and business leaders, and we have 63 members as we speak today. They’re the backbone of everything we’re doing. We’re able to engage our community through the private sector, through the public sector, through the hospitality industry. ... We’re able to provide the College Football Playoff with an unparalleled destination that will be prepared for everything that’s needed to stage this event, that doesn’t just meet expectations, but exceeds them.”
This story was originally published August 31, 2025 at 7:30 AM.
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