Shared experiences tend to draw friends closer together, and Ohio State's Will Howard and Notre Dame's Riley Leonard have had a few.

Neither QB was ranked in the top 600 nationally. Leonard signed with Duke, Howard with Kansas State. Here's the backstory.

Sports make for strange bedfellows -- or in this case, roommates, as Ohio State quarterback Will Howard and his Notre Dame counterpart Riley Leonard discovered. The pair roomed

But Howard has the benefit of someone like true freshman sensation Jeremiah Smith, who had 12 catches for 145 yards and 2 touchdowns in those spots (he’s also No. 4 in FBS with 349 receiving yards on all 3rd-down situations). Compare that to Notre Dame’s leader in those situations, Mitchell Evans, who had 6 catches for 86 yards.

Ohio State had a couple snoozers to start things off as they dominated their first two CFP games. Ohio State blew out Tennessee at home in the first round as they won 42-17, and then they smoked one seed Oregon in the quarterfinals as it was 31-0 halfway through the second quarter. They cruised to a 41-21 win.

The stage is set for an incredible cat-and-mouse game between Riley Leonard and Caleb Downs, two outstanding players whose roles and responsibilities make it a virtual certainty that they’ll collide with the sport’s biggest prize at stake.

At the time, they were two quarterbacks preparing for the biggest season of their lives. Riley Leonard and Will Howard, the soon-to-be starting quarterbacks at Notre Dame and Ohio State, attended the famed Manning Passing Academy at Nicholls State over the summer.