The Ohio State football program won the national championship last season, becoming the second team in a row from the Big Ten to win the title. Of course, TTUN won in 2023 when they were found to have been cheating for at least the first half of the season, so that title will always have an asterisk.
Meanwhile, the Buckeyes were able to win the national championship without any controversy. They won the first 12-team CFP, which shows that the teams in the north are ready to take control of college football. Specfically, teams in the Big Ten.
Ohio State showed that the SEC is no longer the dominant conference in college football. In fact, the Big Ten looks like they are ready to seize power, and perhaps that's why the SEC wants to be in control of the College Football Playoff and the format moving forward.
Why the Ohio State football program officially ended the SEC's dominance
The Ohio State Buckeyes proved that teams not in the SEC can win the national championship regularly. Ohio State is going to be a constant contender in the future. NIL has also leveled the playing field, as it's now legal to pay players. The SEC had been rumored to have been doing that under the table for years.
This doesn't mean that the SEC won't contend for national championships moving forward. They definitely will. It just means that a team from the conference won't be the winner almost every year, as it was in the 2010s and the first half of the 2020s.
Winning the 12-team CFP gives northern teams a blueprint on how to take down the best teams in the South. The Buckeyes expect to be making deep runs in the CFP every year, especially when the CFP expands to 16 teams in the near future.