Ohio State fans reportedly misread College Football Playoff bracket, booked trip to Orange Bowl, not Cotton Bowl

A group of Ohio State fans are reportedly attending the wrong College Football Playoff semifinal game after misreading the CFP bracket and booking a trip to the Orange Bowl.

Penn State reporter Johnny McGonigal posted on Twitter Thursday morning that he ran into a group of Ohio State fans at his hotel ahead of the Orange Bowl.

Get your team’s official College Football Playoff watch from AXIA by CLICKING HERE: “Watches that tell so much more than time”

“They misread the bracket and thought Ohio State would be playing in the Orange Bowl. They’ll be at Penn State-Notre Dame tonight,” McGonigal tweeted.

That is obviously a costly mistake for those Buckeyes fans. Ohio State will be playing Texas in the Cotton Bowl on Friday. Notre Dame and Penn State will meet in the Orange Bowl Thursday night. McGonigal eventually followed up on his original tweet with a little more detail about the fans.

“For those wondering, they looked like students,” he posted. “Said they ‘misread the bracket.’ Didn’t say if they literally misread and booked or misread how it would play out, thinking OSU would play in the Orange Bowl, and booked weeks ago. Funny either way and stunned they didn’t sell.”

Hopefully the group of fans will be treated to an excellent, entertaining game, even if it doesn’t involve Ohio State.

Ryan Day downplays significance of Ohio State familiarity with AT&T Stadium

The Ohio State Buckeyes are getting ready to take on the Texas Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl from AT&T Stadium. It’s a venue that head coach Ryan Day has become more than familiar with over the years.

Despite that, ahead of the Cotton Bowl and College Football Playoff semifinal, Day downplayed having some familiarity with AT&T Stadium.

“Even for me with the TCU game,” Ryan Day said. “So, there’s a lot of history there, and I don’t think that really has anything to do with anything, quite honestly. We’ve got to go play on the field, but it’s a great venue. We’ve had a lot of great games there, and I know we have great fans in the Dallas area and throughout Texas. And so we know it’s going to be a great atmosphere.”

The way things worked out, the game at AT&T Stadium almost seems like a home game for the Texas Longhorns who don’t have to leave their home state compared to a long trip for the Buckeyes. At the same time, this Longhorns team played there as recently as the Big 12 Championship in 2023.

So, while Ryan Day did downplay Ohio State’s own familiarity with the stadium, it also can’t hurt that the Buckeyes have been there before. In Ohio State’s case, the Buckeyes played at AT&T Stadium for last year’s Cotton Bowl, which they lost, and before that, the Buckeyes played TCU there in 2018.

Even transfer quarterback Will Howard has some experience at AT&T Stadium, having played there for the Big 12 Championship Game while he was at Kansas State.