College football lineup of 40-game bowl season set

“We’ve got athletes, too, so we have to make sure we contain them”. The clash of iconic uniforms in Pasadena will be a handsome sight and most appropriate for what still is the greatest bowl game of “em all”.

The four teams that earned spots in the College Football Playoff were named Sunday, and there really were no surprises. Yes, the goal posts move from season to season. Oregon, for all its faults, lost to Nebraska and Colorado by a combined 6 points; toss in the Cal game and they were 9 points short of a 7-5 season. It didn’t always seem that way to others, but we felt that way.

OH state loses to Penn State.

The Gophers were simply outmatched Monday, Nov. 28, at Florida State, losing their first game of the season 75-67.

If they wanted a bone to pick, Penn State and even MI could focus on the weakness of UW’s nonconference schedule.

Former UW coach Tyrone Willingham is one of five former coaches on the 12-person CFP committee. Ohio State (No. 3 in the playoff rankings and the only other one-loss Power Five team) would be in.

Still, this is a defense that allowed 36 points to Louisville, 34 to Florida State, 35 to Virginia Tech, and 43 in their loss to Pitt.

The nonconference schedule never used to be a question for Washington, but changed drastically during the program’s downturn in the 2000s.

The final spot came down to Penn State (11-2) and Pac-12 champion Washington.

But he also said that discussion would not have been almost as long if Washington’s strength of schedule had been better.

On the contrary, Penn State and MI are better brands than Washington. Yet the Buckeyes get to compete for a national championship and the Nittany Lions do not.

Alright, so I said we weren’t going to talk about each matchup, but we have to at least acknowledge the awesomeness of this scenario. The Badgers now have two signature wins on their resume, with both of their losses coming against top-10 competition.

Through the machinations of unbalanced schedules and divisional tiebreakers, the Big Ten staged a title game between teams considered by popular consensus to be the league’s third- and fourth-best.

Misses chance to make playoff.

Maybe next season will be different.

Hubbard’s hunch, which matched conventional wisdom that the Tigers and Buckeyes would meet at the Fiesta Bowl in a College Football Playoff semifinal, proved correct. The one crucial difference, though, is enormous. The defending national champions are the best team in the country by any reasonable measure.

Negatives: The Huskies didn’t play much of a non-conference schedule.

One of the best running backs squares off against one of the best quarterbacks/athletes in college football. Fewer debates, plus it could put some juice back into championship weekend, which has become a little anticlimactic.

The fifth-ranked Nittany Lions – winners of nine straight, including a huge comeback against No. 8 Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game – won’t be part of the four-team playoff.

Sounds interesting, but it is not happening anytime soon. Clemson won the 1978 Gator Bowl over the Buckeyes 17-15 in Woody Hayes’ last game as Buckeyes coach.

Alabama is the only team that has made the four-team CFP field in all three seasons of its existence. “Something would have to give”.

“I’d want to see Ohio State and Alabama just by the number of fans that come from those areas”, said David Mangione, one of the partners of Hattrick’s Tavern in downtown Tampa.

Selection committee chairman Kirby Hocutt told ESPN, “We looked at a lot of things”. Trust me, I do it every fall Saturday and I hate it but here we are.