Hail to the Victors
Michigan outruns Ohio State for the second straight year; the ACC is still terrible and another top six upset in College Station.
Let me be one of the last to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, hope it was festive with family and friends and football.
For the second straight year, Michigan ran away from Ohio State. This time, they did so after starting slowly, trailing at half and, most importantly, in Columbus. The Buckeyes merely scored three second half points as they fell 45-23. This keeps them out of the Big Ten title game and, for a moment, out of the Playoff.
I know one friend who summed it up by saying he ‘drove 800 miles in 24 hours to watch [Ohio State] get skulldragged.’
I’m not even sure if ‘Skulldragged’ is a real word, but it is the perfect word to sum up the way Donovan Edwards treated the scarlet and gray defense. He had 22 carries for 216 yards including two TD runs of 75 and 85 yards on the Wolverines final two possessions to put the nail in the coffin.
As a conference, the Big Ten has somehow been artificially inflated where people believe it sits right behind the SEC with three top 10 programs. However, no other team has more than eight wins and Purdue is playing for the title. Yet when we talk about the Playoffs…
Horseshoes & Hand Grenades
In this era, how often have we seen CFB teams wind up so close for qualifying for the Playoff. Baylor and TCU in 2014; Penn State in 2016; UCF in 2017, Utah in 2019, Texas A&M in 2020 and Baylor again in 2021 just to name a few.
But being close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Good thing Alabama has only lost close this season and that the Buckeyes play in a horseshoe. If it is close for those teams, then it can still matter.
Both teams have been selected to the Playoff before without even winning a division championship. Ohio State is in position at fifth to slide in if there is chaos and ‘Bama is somehow sitting at sixth.
It is just more hypocrisy from the committee due to a vague mission statement that took a good idea for a four team playoff and built it on a shaky foundation.
The Committee insisted on honoring every head to head tiebreaker—Florida State over LSU; Oregon State over Oregon and Oregon over UCLA— with the exception of Tennessee and Alabama.
Also, rank Tulane in the Top 10 you cowards.
Maybe none of this will matter, especially in the future as the Playoff is expanding to 12 teams, but this is College Football!
And close doesn’t count in College Football.
Top 10 Big 12 Title
ESPN personalities Stephan A. Smith and Paul Finebaum berated and belittled TCU for being undefeated with a weak non-conference and Big 12 schedule.
This was after they had beaten Texas on the road!
Then they picked Baylor to upset the Frogs, not because they believed in the Bears but because they simply do not like the conference or the colors. And then they doubled downed, saying that TCU still shouldn’t make the Playoff after they beat Baylor.
A classic, ‘tell me you don’t watch Big 12 football without telling me you don’t watch Big 12 football.’
Neither TCU nor the Big 12 seem to be able to win.
The league has reinvented itself from an air raid touchdown factory so innovative that the SEC adopted many of their principles to an ironclad defensive fortress with coaches serving as chess grand masters.
TCU has elevated their position from Cinderella darling when they went 25-1 from 2009-10; made two BCS bowls; and beat Wisconsin in the 2011 Rose Bowl to a Power 5 staple as they have only missed a bowl game three times since joining the league in 2012.
None of the identity shifts or rebranding efforts matter for the conference or any team not name Texas or Oklahoma. For whatever reason—I would guess the conference’s ineptitude in 2014—people in power will turn their nose up to Big 12 football.
So much so that a top 10 Kansas State team cannot further their own Playoff case against TCU (albeit with three losses). Just like a win over a top 10 Kansas State team in 2014 meant nothing for Baylor. If Texas were in the Wildcats’ position, I am positive they would be getting some love.
Pac-12 Relevance
The league that is always left for dead, is actually now the second best in the country. And they are the first conference title game to play with USC getting a rematch with Utah.
How interesting, however, that the Pac-12 still finds a way to shoot itself in the foot even when their teams are finally thriving.
All eyes were on the Apple Cup to see which team would face the Trojans for the championship. Though, a Washington win would actually create a three-way tie for second and send Utah to the title game. The Huskies and Utes did not play each other this season.
Still, a fantastic and fun season for the league out west.
ACC Frauds
Oh Clemson…
The conference went 1-3 against the SEC last weekend and both title game participants lost.
Top 6 College Station Disasters
Bryan, Texas was not the place to be if you were a top six CFB team this season.
Texas A&M, equipped with all of its millions of dollars, were ranked sixth in the preseason but only scored 14 points against Appalachian State back in September in a stunning defeat.
Fast forward to the weekend after Thanksgiving and No. 5 LSU had a path to make the Playoff. However, the Aggies destroyed the Tigers fairly easily in the last game of their disappointing five-win campaign.
In a season that saw Texas A&M suffer a six-game losing streak, the Aggies made some history by bookending their season with being on each side of Top 6 upsets.
Now we have the championship weekend, and honestly, I hope that the top four teams stay as is.
Ironic that just a few days before we nearly get much needed four-team Playoff parity as Ohio State, Alabama and Clemson are all nearly eliminated; the sport announces that the Playoff will expand to 12 teams beginning in the 2024-25 season.