Check out these four finals.
Those four strange, disorienting, beautiful endings.
One from Indiana, Oregon, Ole Miss or Miami will win the College Football Playoff national title. Can we take a moment and celebrate how impossible it would have felt just three years ago and how good it feels now?
announcement
Here is Indiana, historically one of the worst programs in college football, leading everyone to a 14-0 record and well-deserved national championship favorite status thanks to a genius named Curt Cignetti who hid in plain sight until he was 60 years old.
Here is Oregon, the poster child for the new money that has hovered among the elite for so long it has become the establishment, hoping to deliver the national championship that 87-year-old Nike founder Phil Knight wants to experience.
Here is Ole Miss, the school that has never missed a tailgate but also never won an SEC championship in the modern era, trying to save its conference from playoff humiliation while the coach who built the program watches from Baton Rouge because he thought it was easier to win a title there.
And here’s Miami, a team that wasn’t scheduled to make the CFP until the selection committee made a last-second change and beat the Hurricanes over Notre Dame for the last spot in the field.
announcement
About that?
Goodbye, Georgia. See you later, Ohio State. Good luck in your future endeavors, Alabama.
This sport has changed in ways no one predicted. But here’s a question: why did it take so long?
This season’s College Football Playoff didn’t exactly follow the script. (Davis Long/Yahoo Sports)
We should all spend the next two and a half weeks thinking about what happened to college football this season. In the second year of the 12-team playoff, the sport went crazy in the best way possible. All we wanted was a postseason where teams considered elite by voters or committee members would prove it on the field in a playoff format that resembled any other level of football.
Now we have this, and one thing is definitely proven: when you put teams in a tournament bracket, unexpected things happen.
announcement
Even in college football.
Of course, we knew this last year when the 12-team playoff debuted, resulting in a championship game between the 7th and 8th seeds. But since those teams were Notre Dame and Ohio State, the bluest of blue bloods, it didn’t really register.
This year, regardless of the outcome of the semifinals, we will have a championship game between programs that have been considered unknowns for most of their history. And yes, that even includes Miami, whose dynasty era has so far faded into history — and with so much futility among them — that coach Mario Cristobal all but dismisses the suggestion that it can be recreated.
Which raises another question: Is this an anomaly or the new normal for college football?
announcement
Probably a little of both.
As the playoff progresses and likely expands to 16 teams, hopefully staying for a while, we may not get such an unlikely set of semifinals. Elites won’t stay down forever.
But it would be a mistake to assume this is just a product of the more even distribution of talent because of the NIL and the transfer portal.
Obviously, it is an important factor. Programs like Alabama and Georgia can’t afford to hoard recruits and have an assembly line of talent ready when their best players move on to the NFL. All programs will now have holes in the list. That’s how it is.
announcement
But there’s something about tournaments that makes us wonder how many national champions we remember from the past would have made it through a bracket that forced them to face three or four teams of similar talent.
Think about all the BCS controversies over the years or teams that had overwhelming talent but stumbled at the wrong time and fell far enough in the polls that they never had a chance.
Take the 2012 season for example. If you remember, that was the year that the epic SEC championship game between Alabama and Georgia came down to the final play to secure a spot in the national title game against a gritty but undertalented Notre Dame team that managed to get into first place by winning every game it played.
Would any of these teams have survived a 12-team playoff that would have given Georgia a second chance, that would have included a great Oregon team whose only loss was a 17-14 overtime loss to a Stanford team that would also have been on the field? Oh, and you’d also have to deal with the team that beat Alabama: Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M, who were playing as well as anyone in the country at the end of the season.
announcement
Do you think it could have been a fun playoff to watch?
Of course, throughout history, there have been some inevitables that could have won a championship in any format. The LSU team led by Joe Burrow since 2019 comes to mind as one of those teams so dominant that they probably haven’t lost to anyone.
But as we look back at history, it’s fair to question whether some of these BCS matchups that were supposed to pit No. 1 against No. 2 were influenced by brand bias and preseason rankings.
It’s hard to come to any other conclusion when you see teams ranked 7th (Oregon), 10th (Miami), 20th (Indiana) and 21st (Ole Miss) four months ago survive the challenge and come out on top.
announcement
For many years, the college football paradigm was based largely on what we thought we knew about the teams.
It used to be a beauty pageant. Now, it is a month-long exam.
Finally, the results arrived. They may not be what we expected, but at least we know we are uncovering the truth.
