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College Football

10 things I’m absolutely overreacting to after college football’s first 12-team Playoff

Brett Friedlander

By Brett Friedlander

Published:


Take a bow, College Football Playoff Committee.

You may have taken heat for your selections and seedings. Some of which was warranted. But in the end, it all worked out and the new 12-team format did everything it was designed to do.

It created a pathway for more teams than ever to compete for a national championship, including several that would never previously have had the opportunity. It created an electric on-campus excitement, stimulated interest for an entire month and gave us some memorable games.

And in the end, it identified the 2 best teams – determined on the field rather than by a computer or committee in a boardroom – to battle it out for the title.

Forget that Ohio State was only the No. 8 seed. That’s just a number beside its name in the bracket. The Buckeyes were arguably the nation’s most talented team and a title contender from Day 1.

Ohio State’s 34-23 victory over Notre Dame on Monday night didn’t just validate its championship credentials and finally give coach Ryan Day the credit he’s long deserved. It also validated a system that, while still not perfect, doesn’t need the major overhaul some suggest.

That’s just 1 of the 10 things I’m absolutely overreacting to after college football’s first 12-team Playoff:

10. Sorry Herbie, Indiana did belong on that field

Kirk Herbstreit and a multitude of others, including ESPN colleague Sean McDonough, were quick to pile on the Hoosiers after their opening-round loss to Notre Dame. Herbie went so far as to say “Indiana was outclassed in that game. It was not a team that should have been on that field when you consider other teams that could have been there.”

Talk about overreactions.

Never mind that the Hoosiers’ 27-17 loss was the closest of the 4 first-round games. Or that as it turns out, Notre Dame is pretty darn good. Good enough to make it all the way to the championship game, holding perennial power Georgia (albeit with a backup quarterback) to just 10 points and 296 total yards along the way. 

That’s 7 fewer points and only 18 more yards than Indiana managed, for those of you keeping track at home.

In retrospect, the criticism was either premature since it was the first game of the new Playoff format or more likely, an attempt to push a narrative that someone else should have been “on that field” instead of the Hoosiers. Someone from a conference that pays ESPN a lot of money to promote.

9. More campus site games, please

OK, so the first-round games were all duds. It’s not as if that hasn’t happened before. Anyone remember that 63-28 nail-biter between LSU and Oklahoma in 2019? Or Clemson’s 31-0 thumping of Ohio State 3 years earlier?

And others?

Instead of whining about the competitiveness of the games, maybe we should be celebrating the decision to hold them at campus venues instead of antiseptic indoor neutral sites with empty seats because fans were saving their money for possible later-round trips.

From the Friday Night Lights in South Bend to the White Out – both literal and physical – at Penn State to the stadium-shaking roars at Ohio State and Texas, the atmosphere surrounding all 4 games was electric. It also helped give the favored higher seeds, all of whom won, a distinct advantage they earned through their regular season performance.

It was such a great environment that Playoff organizers are crazy if they don’t move the 4 quarterfinal games to home stadiums in the future, as well.

8. Let the top teams be the top seeds

Kudos to the power brokers for trying to be inclusive by giving teams outside the SEC and Big Ten the opportunity to have first-round byes.

Still, seeds should be earned. Not awarded. So even though Big 12 champion Arizona State took Texas to double overtime and Group of 5 representative Boise State put up a decent fight before falling to Penn State in the quarterfinals, neither had any business being seeded as high as they were.

The Sun Devils were ranked 12th in the final regular-season Playoff rankings. The Broncos were only slightly higher at No. 9. Both should have been in the 12-team field. They earned that right by winning their conference titles. By the same token, Texas and Penn State also earned their top-4 seeds and the byes that come with them by finishing 3-4 in the final rankings.

Would Ohio State and Notre Dame still have met for the championship had the bracket been seeded according to rankings, with no guaranteed byes?

Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll never know.

Just as we’ll never know if 3-loss Alabama would have advanced had it been given the final at-large bid. Or if Georgia would have beaten Notre Dame had starting quarterback Carson Beck been healthy and able to play.

7. … but limit the automatic bids to 1 per conference

The powers that be in college football would be wise to take a good, long look at the success and popularity of March Madness before turning the Playoff into an SEC-Big Ten Invitational, as proposed. The charm of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is that it’s all-inclusive. And that no matter how low a team is seeded or how big an underdog it might be, everyone has an equal shot at playing for the championship.

There won’t be any Cinderella stories the magnitude of UMBC or Fairleigh Dickinson because of the size of the field. Even if the Playoff eventually expands to 16, as many expect. And you can bank on the Group of 5 representatives to almost always be among the first teams eliminated. But eventually, someone is going to pull off a shocker. Maybe 2 or 3 to get to the championship game.

That possibility will always keep people watching. Even though they know there’s a good chance the games might not be close.

So will a diversity of participants.

This year’s 12-team bracket included teams from 10 states, 7 East of the Mississippi and 5 from the West, representing 5 conferences and an independent.

I’m sure Greg Sankey, Tony Petitti and the folks at the World Wide Leader would love for the Playoff to become an SEC-Big Ten Invitational. But 1 automatic bid per each of the 4 power conferences and 1 for the top Group of 5 team is enough. All the other bids should be based on merit, not affiliation.

6. The ACC didn’t shut up Lane Kiffin … his own SEC did

The outspoken Ole Miss coach wasn’t the only one complaining that the SEC should have gotten a 4th team into the Playoff field. And that whichever team it might have been – Alabama, South Carolina or Kiffin’s Rebels – would have fared better than final at-large selection SMU.

He was just the one yelling the loudest about it. 

That is until they started playing the games.

Kiffin’s social media chirping came to an abrupt end once Tennessee started falling hopelessly behind on the way to its opening-round 42-17 smackdown at the hands of Ohio State. And he remained in hiding as the rest of his SEC superiority premise was blown out of the water by the Crimson Tide and Gamecocks, both of whom lost their bowl matchups to Big Ten opponents.

It should be noted that bowl results are not a true indicator of a conference’s strength or the Playoff-worthiness of a team that was left out of the bracket. There are too many variables at play, including opt-outs and motivation, to make those assumptions. But at least in this one case, the results did prove something absolute.

That Lane Kiffin can be muzzled.

And it was his own conference rivals that did it.  

5. 5 players who improved their draft stock

The big prize in the College Football Playoff is the national championship. But there’s also plenty at stake for individual players with NFL Draft aspirations. A big performance on the biggest stage can catapult a player up the draft board. Or in some cases, get him into the draft.

Here are 5 players whose Draft stock has soared during this year’s playoff:

  • Cam Skattebo, RB, Arizona State: 141 yards and 2 touchdowns on 29 rushes, team-leading 7 catches for 86 yards and a 42-yard touchdown pass against Texas in the quarterfinals. All while yacking several times on the sideline between possessions. The kind of versatility and grit NFL teams love.
  • Matthew Golden, WR, Texas: Golden showed off his explosiveness by averaging 22.6 yards on his 11 catches over 3 Playoff games. But it was the clutch ability to produce under pressure as he did with a game-saving fourth-down touchdown catch in overtime against Arizona State that made the biggest impression on the scouts.
  • Xavier Watts, S, Notre Dame: Watts is a ball-hawk who led the Irish with 6 interceptions. But in wins against Indiana, Georgia and Penn State leading up to Monday’s championship game, the 6-foot, 201-pound senior has shown he’s just as effective as a physical run-stuffer. He averaged 8 tackles per game, including a team-leading 8 against the Buckeyes.
  • Quinshon Judkins, RB, Ohio State; The Ole Miss transfer has another year of eligibility remaining if he decides to come back for his senior season. But why? After rushing for 2 touchdowns and scoring another on a pass reception while showing his breakaway speed on an electric 70-yard run early in the second half, he has nothing left to prove.
  • Will Howard, QB, Ohio State: Whatever questions that might have been raised by his MVP performance against Michigan have been erased with 4 standout Playoff performances in which he completed better than 70% of throws while throwing for 8 touchdowns. He was 17-of-21 for 231 yards and 2 scores in the title game victory.

4. Maybe the Irish should have paced themselves

The opening drive was epic. But at what cost?

Notre Dame threw the first punch Monday by taking the opening kickoff and held onto the ball for 9 1/2 minutes in marching 75 yards on 18 plays for a touchdown that staked it to an early 7-0 lead. Quarterback Riley Leonard was the star of the drive, carrying the ball 9 times, including 2 4th-down conversions and a 1-yard scoring run.

But he was clearly exhausted when he came off the field. And neither he nor his offense was the same again. The Irish ran only 7 more plays for the rest of the half, managing just 18 yards on a pair of 3-and-outs and one 7-yard run before retreating to the locker room.

The break helped Notre Dame regroup, though way too late to make a difference in the outcome.

3. You let Jeremiah Smith get that open?

Yes, I know Notre Dame was selling out to stop the run and get the ball back for one final shot at tying the game. And that Ohio State didn’t appear interested in throwing the ball in such a critical situation.

But how, if you’re the Irish, do you leave 1 poor cornerback to try and stay with the Buckeyes’ big-play sensation? Even if the defender is an All-American – which he’s not – it would have been a mismatch.

Predictably, the decision turned out to be a fatal error. On a 3rd-and-11 play from the Ohio State 34, Smith easily buzzed past Christian Gray to get open downfield. Howard dropped it right on target for a 56-yard dagger ended the Irish’s comeback bid and all but clinched the Buckeyes’ 9th national title and first since 2014.

2. New format, familiar champion

At some point, probably soon, the Playoff format will be tweaked again and expanded to 16 teams.

If/when that happens, no one will be more excited than the newly crowned champion Ohio State.

No, the Buckeyes aren’t looking for an even greater challenge than the one they just conquered. It’s just that they seem to win the title every time college football adopts a new postseason format.

They did it in 2014, the first year of the old 4-team bracket. And now they’ve christened the new 12-team Playoff by winning again. And this time, they did it the hard way by beating 2 SEC teams, top-ranked Oregon and a hot Notre Dame team as the No. 8 seed. 

1. Ryan Day is still the same coach he was before Monday

The narrative surrounding Ohio State’s polarizing coach changed dramatically with Monday’s win in Atlanta. He’s now 1 of only 3 active college coaches with a national championship on his resume, joining Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney in the exclusive club.

But other than that, nothing has changed.

It’s not as if he caught lightning in a bottle and suddenly became a coaching genius over the course of the past month. The guy has a better career winning percentage than anyone in the history of college football besides Hall of Famers Walter Camp and Knute Rockne. His teams have lost only 10 games in his 6 seasons with the Buckeyes. 

The only thing that could be held against him is that 4 of those 10 losses have come against rival Michigan. And plenty of Ohio State fans did – and probably still do – hold it against him.

It’s hard to believe there was a realistic chance Day could be fired if the Buckeyes lost to Notre Dame and didn’t bring home the title. Maybe now the folks in Columbus will finally give their coach a break.

At least until next year’s game against the Wolverines. 

Brett Friedlander

Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.

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