NCAA Division 1 2020-2021 160 2021-01-12 2021-01-12 https://r2.thesportsdb.com/images/media/event/thumb/i6dazh1610493029.jpg https://r2.thesportsdb.com/images/media/event/poster/ihb9041610493185.jpg The 2021 College Football Playoff National Championship was a college football bowl game played to determine a national champion in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) for the 2020 season. It was played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on January 11, 2021, with kickoff at 8:15 p.m. EST and television coverage by ESPN. Aside from the all-star games scheduled to follow, it was the culminating game of the 2020–21 bowl season. The championship featured the top-seeded Alabama Crimson Tide from the Southeastern Conference defeating the third-seed Ohio State Buckeyes from the Big Ten Conference, 52–24. The win gave Alabama head coach Nick Saban his seventh national championship, breaking the record for the most by a single Division I coach. The record was previously held by Bear Bryant, who won six while at Alabama from 1958–1982. Background In August 2018, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, was announced as the host site for the seventh College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship. The Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl were designated as semifinal games; both semifinals were scheduled for January 1, 2021. On August 5, 2020, CFP organizers announced that they would move the release of final rankings and semifinal matchups (sometimes referred to as "Selection Weekend") from December 6 to 20, in order to accommodate conferences that had delayed their championship games to mid-December. On December 20, the semifinal pairings were announced, with No. 1 Alabama matched with No. 4 Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl, and No. 2 Clemson matched with No. 3 Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl. The Rose Bowl game, normally played in Pasadena, California, was moved to Arlington, Texas, prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic in California. As the 2020 FBS season was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, CFP organizers had identified a contingency date of January 18 for the championship game, which did not need to be used. Attendance at Hard Rock Stadium was limited to approximately 20% of normal capacity, with the official attendance listed as 14,926. 1081205