The first thing we learned from the opening round of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff is there really aren’t 12 teams good enough to compete for a national title.
Indiana, SMU, Clemson and Tennessee were all sizable underdogs in their first-round road games, and all proved they weren’t up to the task of competing on the big stage. That led to four boring games in which the announcers spent much of the fourth quarter rationalizing the losing teams’ presence in the CFP and overhyping the teams that handily beat them.
Going from four teams to 12 was always a stretch. Six teams, with two getting first-round byes, would have sufficed. Eight teams, with no byes, would’ve been OK. But 12?
Well, money talks, and it never shuts up when it comes to college football.
And despite all the blather ESPN and TNT delivered in their pregame shows, on which breathless analysts suggested the expanded playoffs was the greatest thing to happen to college football since Red Grange, the games had the feel of another bowl game once the novelty of playing in a non-bowl stadium wore off.
In fact, the CFP organizers should’ve just replaced other bowls for first-round action, utilizing the lesser ones already in place that exist for the sole purpose of creating more revenue for Disney Co. and other TV network owners.
Notre Dame-Indiana might have made a decent Sun Bowl matchup, replacing wind-chill factor with the actual sun and Touchdown Jesus with Tony the Tiger.
Ohio State-Tennessee, a matchup of Power Two powers that couldn’t even make their own conference title games, would’ve been a perfect Citrus Bowl, in which Big Ten and SEC wannabes always meet.
Texas-Clemson would’ve felt right at home in the Pop-Tarts Bowl, with Matthew McConaughey eating the Pop-Tart mascot after the Longhorns won while mumbling, “All right, all right, all right.”
Penn State-SMU, the least interesting matchup of the four first-rounders, would have been more appropriate for the long-defunct Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl, which featured a team from Texas against an out-of-state team whose fans traveled well.
Alas, we can only dream.
Instead we got overkill about the weather, Penn State coach James Franklin practicing his indefensible decision-making in big games and overrated quarterbacks such as SMU’s Kevin Jenkins, Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke and Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava stinking up the joint.
Oh, by the way, did you know it gets cold in late December in the Midwest?
Next week’s quarterfinals should provide much better games and a real playoff-type atmosphere for viewers in warm-weather sites and domed stadiums. But we’ll see.
At least they’ll all be played in the bigger, traditional bowls — Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Peach — and on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Bowl games before Christmas simply lack the aura of the end-of-year and start-of-year games. The NFL even scheduled two games Saturday opposite the CFP, undeterred by the competition.
Two of the lower-seeded quarterfinalists began the week as considerable favorites, with No. 6 seed Penn State a 10½-point favorite over third-seeded Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl and No. 5 seed Texas a whopping 13½-point favorite over fourth-seeded Arizona State in the Peach Bowl. You can pencil in Penn State and Texas for the semis, which shows how ludicrous the CFP seeding process is and should lead to changes next year to ensure the four most dominant teams get the first-round byes.
The most interesting game figures to be Ohio State-Oregon in the Rose Bowl, a rematch of the Big Ten thriller in October in Eugene, Ore., where Buckeyes quarterback Will Howard slid a tad too late at the gun to deny his team a shot at a potential winning field goal in a 32-31 loss.
Oregon is the top seed but only a 1½-point favorite over the Buckeyes, who also lost to Michigan. Ohio State recovered from its devastating 13-10 loss to the Wolverines in “The Game” with Saturday’s 42-17 pummeling of Tennessee, a game so dull former Buckeyes quarterback Kirk Herbstreit decided to launch into a partisan screed in the final minutes of the broadcast, defending Ohio State coach Ryan Day for the loss to Michigan despite being a three-touchdown favorite.
Herbstreit referred to the anti-Day crowd that wants the Buckeyes coach fired for his repeated failures to beat their hated archrivals as “the lunatic fringe.”
“I’m sure they’ll be happy tonight, fired up about what Ohio State did,” Herbstreit said. “But God forbid they lose to Oregon, they’ll want to fire him again.”
Herbstreit even took aim at his ESPN colleagues on “First Take,” a show dependent on sports “takes” such as “Should the Michigan loss cost Ryan Day?” Apparently some of the designated shouters on the shoutfest agreed, which upset Herbstreit to no end.
Does Herbstreit understand the importance of beating Michigan to Ohio State fans, or is he just too comfortable acting as a shill for Day?
Meanwhile, Notre Dame is coming off a virtual bye — its matchup against overmatched Indiana — to face SEC champion Georgia, the No. 2 seed, in the Sugar Bowl. Notre Dame finally won a “big” playoff game Friday, though it will be completely forgotten in a month if Georgia stifles quarterback Riley Leonard and the Irish running game, as many expect.
The Irish could use some help in New Orleans from comedian Shane Gillis, who might be their version of McConaughey, the uber-Texas fan. Gillis went on ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Friday and called analyst Pat McAfee a “real scumbag” for picking Indiana. He was joking, of course, but there was applause for the gesture in many living rooms around the country.
Gillis then called cocky Indiana coach Curt Cignetti “disgusting” for coming out on the field before the game without his players to “get some camera time for himself.”
“It was disgusting, and I thought, ‘Wow, what a sad, disgusting program,’” Gillis said of Cignetti and Indiana.
Knute Rockne couldn’t have given a more stirring pregame speech. The Irish will need that kind of bravado to beat the Bulldogs, so hopefully Gillis will be at the Superdome to talk smack at Georgia coach Kirby Smart.
Despite its uninspiring opening weekend, there’s plenty of time for the CFP to provide memorable games and big moments that make college football what it is.
Now if we can only find a way to get rid of McAfee.
