Week 14 Rundown

It's amazing that college football is even able to field a Playoff field of 4 teams.  No, really.  If you really hate yourself, you can read the comment section of an article by a national college football writer.  Or more likely, you can go through the comments of a national college football writer's tweets.  The writer won't even state an opinion.  They will state some simple fact like a team's record and it will inevitably devolve into people ripping a team's schedule and questioning how they could possibly make the Playoff or even a good bowl game when they actually haven't played anyone good when you go through their schedule.

So now we have the 4 team Playoff field set and it doesn't include a team that has won 25 straight games.  It does include Alabama and Clemson for the 112th straight year.  Oklahoma is back for the second straight year, and Notre Dame cracks the Playoff field for the first time.  This is about the bluest of blue-blood field you can get.  Alabama and Clemson have both opened as double digit favorites in their games.  So obviously Notre Dame and Oklahoma have no chance or even any business being in the Playoff according to the Twitter-sphere.  I honestly don't even know why they play games on the field in college football.  They should just go by preseason projections and the eye test and crown a champ.  But it doesn't matter what system is used.  People will complain.  They complained about the BCS.  They complain about the Playoff.  The bowl matchups are much better with the current system than it used to be 20 years ago.  Don't lose that perspective.

The Playoff will probably be good, but there are quite a few other intriguing matchups out there.  Georgia-Texas in the Sugar Bowl.  LSU-UCF in the Fiesta Bowl.  And you got to love the SEC-Big 10 matchups because those 2 conferences are always spouting off about the depth of the conference.  These are good games to measure that, Kentucky-Penn State and Mississippi State-Iowa.  There might be 120 points scored in the West Virginia-Syracuse matchup.  There might be 20 points scored in the TCU-Cal matchup.  But the best part of all this?  There is still college football going on for the next month!

The final Jacknife Power rankings had Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and UCF as the top 4.  That could have easily have been the Playoff field.  Would anyone really have had an issue with UCF being in the Playoff except for the fans of the schools ranked ahead of them?

There are still some close races in the Jacknife leagues.  The bowl season can definitely swing some of those leagues.  It's sadly close to the end of another season.  Enjoy the bowls and holiday season!