GRAPEVINE, Texas — The first College Football Playoff expanded the national championship race, made the regular season even more intriguing and produced a final four with major star power.
Nick Saban’s No. 1-seeded Alabama Crimson Tide vs. Urban Meyer’s No. 4-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes in the Sugar Bowl.
Marcus Mariota, this season’s Heisman Trophy front-runner, and the second-seeded Oregon Ducks vs. Jameis Winston, last season’s Heisman Trophy winner, and the defending national champion Florida State Seminoles in the Rose Bowl.
The winning teams will collide Jan. 12 in Arlington, Texas, at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys.
A new era, indeed, but with the same old problems: What is the best way to pick the playoff teams and what should be the criteria?
After six weeks of ranking the top 25 teams, the CFP selection committee shuffled its deck Sunday and dealt the Big 12 out of the playoff.
“We’re smarting today,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
TCU, which was third in the rankings last week, ended up sixth. Big 12 co-champion Baylor moved up one slot to No. 5, but both were squeezed out by Ohio State, which won over the selection committee with a doozy of a closing statement in its conference championship game: a 59-0 pounding of Wisconsin for the Big Ten title.
“I would say that human nature is that the most recent thing that occurs, in this case the most recent achievements, are the most impactful,” Bowlsby said. “Ohio State’s victory over Wisconsin was complete domination, and in that regard they played their way into the position they now enjoy.”
The Big 12 doesn’t have one of those anymore. Each of its teams plays only 12 games, compared with 13 for champions of the other “power five” conferences.
Bowlsby and his conference athletic directors are meeting in New York this week, and he anticipates the topic of how best to determine a Big 12 champion will come up. “This will be a catalyst for discussion for sure,” Bowlsby said.
The Big 12 can’t play a championship game because it only has 10 members. But the Big 12, along with the Atlantic Coast Conference, is trying to change that. The leagues have proposed getting rid of NCAA rules requiring a conference have 12 members split into two divisions to play a title game.
Playing a title game with 10 teams that play a nine-game, round-robin schedule isn’t ideal because the title game would always be a rematch, Bowlsby said.
“I don’t know with 10 it’s something that we would necessarily do,” Bowlsby said. But conference expansion is a complicated issue that goes well beyond whether to play a championship game in football.
Bowlsby cautioned about making a “knee-jerk” reaction to the results of one season.
Bowl-anza
The final four of the first College Football Playoff were named Sunday, but not without some controversy. Ohio State, after demolishing Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game, leapfrogged TCU, which was No. 3 a week ago, and grabbed the fourth and final slot. A look at the Jan. 1 semifinal matchups:
ROSE BOWL
No. 2 Oregon (12-1) vs. No. 3 Florida State (13-0), 3 p.m., ESPN
SUGAR BOWL
No. 1 Alabama (12-1) vs. No. 4 Ohio State (12-1), 6:30 p.m., ESPN
Front Range bowlers
LAS VEGAS BOWL
Dec. 20, 1:30 p.m., ABC
Colorado State (10-2) vs. Utah (8-4)
FAMOUS IDAHO POTATO BOWL
Dec. 20, 3:45 p.m., ESPN
Air Force (9-3) vs. Western Michigan (8-4)
Selection process: Ohio State in, but Big 12 left out? Crying from Texas teams.
