The votes have been cast and the match-ups for the New Year’s Six Bowl Games, including the two national semi-final contests – the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans – have been set and finalised amid the expected amount of controversy.
Here are my five overriding thoughts in the wake of the announcement of the first ever College Football Playoff bracket:
1. Alabama deserved their ranking: They’ve been the best team in the nation for most of the year, and despite Oregon’s demolition job of Arizona in the Pac-12 Championship Game, the Tide’s similarly comfortable win over Missouri in the SEC Championship kept them atop the rankings, and sets up a pretty interesting Nick Saban vs. Urban Meyer Sugar Bowl match-up!
More importantly than that, for everyone who’s mouth waters at the prospect of the Oregon offense vs. the Alabama defense – and, let’s be honest, that’s pretty much everyone who loves college football – it puts the Tide on a collision course with the Ducks in the National Championship game I think everyone outside of Tallahassee and Columbus wants to see.
2. Ohio State Need To Be Very Good against Alabama: Putting the Buckeyes in the final four, on the strength of their admittedly-impressive Big Ten Championship performance, is a risky move on the playoff committee’s behalf.
I’ll tell you now, if the Buckeyes absolutely stink it up against the Crimson Tide in New Orleans, there’ll be even more controversy than there already is over the inclusion of Urban Meyer’s team.
If the Buckeyes don’t play against the Tide – well, to a certain extent anyway, because that Alabama defense is going to make life difficult – there’ll be a backlash like no other. With Baylor and/or TCU, we knew what we were going to get. The Buckeyes are serious Wild Cars. Saban should be a little wary. So should Ohio State fans. I mean, Cardale Jones was the third-string quarterback for a reason. If he tosses a few bad interceptions, watch the uproar out of Waco and Fort Worth.
3. No Outright Big XII Champion Cost Baylor & TCU a Final Four spot: The problem, herein, is the idea of a co-conference champion. Despite the Bears beating the Horned Frogs in their head-to-head game earlier this year, the two couldn’t be separated by their own conference and, therefore, are the first pair of teams on the outside looking in.
The Big XII has previously stated that they’re okay with awarding the conference championship to two schools, I’ve got a feeling they’ll be changing their tune after seeing Baylor and TCU, either of whom would surely have jumped ahead of the Buckeyes and in that fourth spot, had they been the winners of a conference championship game.
Or, at the very least, declared outright conference champions. Baylor coach Art Briles apparently said as much – angrily, if you believe the reports – when he confronted Big XII commissioner Bob Bowlsby after Baylor’s Saturday night victory over Kansas State.
If Baylor had been made outright Big XII champions by virtue of their earlier win over TCU, then Ohio State would likely be on the outer, and there’d be a tonne less controversy than exists now. The other option, of course, is to bring in two more teams and be able to stage a conference championship. That worked for Ohio State, didn’t it?
4. Boise State Have a Real Chance at a Fiesta Bowl title: Don’t sleep on the Broncos, who are 2-0 in Fiesta Bowl games all-time, including the memorable win over the Oklahoma Sooners in 2007.
Yes, the 2014 iteration of the high-octane Broncos managed a paltry 21 points offensively against Fresno State – the other seven were courtesy of an interception return by Tanner Vallejo – in the Mountain West Conference, but we saw in that game the emergence of their defense.
As good as the Broncos have shown themselves to be on the offensive side of the football, I doubt they’ll endure two bad games. So, Grant Hedrick will be back to his best passing the football, and considering how well he used his feet on Saturday, he’s likely to give the Wildcat defense, shredded by Oregon on Friday night, fits. Then there’s the BSU defense which is seriously underrated and might just decide to use the national platform on New Year’s Eve to show us all how good they can be.
5. Whatever happens, The Rose Bowl Game will be intriguing: Sure, it isn’t the traditional Big Ten/Pac-12(10) match-up that the Rose Bowl Game committee so covets, but Jameis Winston vs. Marcus Mariota on New Year’s Day in the Granddaddy Of Them All promises to be nothing short of spectacular.
It may very well be a quarterback battle between last year’s Heisman Trophy winner and this year’s. One thing is for sure, both teams, on their day, can score points like it’s going out of fashion. We’ve seen a few wide-open Rose Bowl Games in recent years, and this might be another.
The flip side is this: Oregon, in the past, has been susceptible to being shut down offensively by good defensive teams when given ample weeks to prepare. Ohio State got them in the Rose Bowl a few years back, and Auburn did something similar in the National Championship Game more recently, too.
At the same time, defending National Champions Florida State have had far from an ideal season. They’ve had well-documented troubles in recent games, requiring a four-quarter effort to get past a plucky Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship. In fact, they’ve made winning late and scrappily an art this year.
If FSU aren’t on their game, Marcus Mariota and the Ducks are likely to blow them away. The ‘Noles will sweat on the outcome of a Jameis Winston student code of conduct hearing, though the cynic in me suggests that the outcome won’t be known until after football season.
The Rose Bowl Game won’t be one to miss!
No comments:
Post a Comment