Before either began their college football careers in Columbus, C.J. Stroud and Jaxon Smith-Njigba were All-American Bowl teammates in 2020.
Both played for the West team at the all-star game and spent a week practicing with each other leading up to the game. In their first two years at Ohio State, Stroud and Smith-Njigba have said that All-American Bowl was where they started to develop their chemistry, one that would pay dividends in their record-breaking sophomore seasons with the Buckeyes, which culminated with a Rose Bowl in which Stroud threw for a school-record 573 yards and six touchdowns and Smith-Njigba caught 15 passes for a school-record 347 receiving yards and three touchdowns.