No surprises as CFP set

The Big 12 champion Sooners fell to No. 4 after not playing in a conference championship game Saturday, where it will face undefeated No. 1 Clemson (13-0, 8-0 ACC), which won the ACC championship Saturday night with a 45-37 win over North Carolina, in the Orange Bowl semifinal December 31 in Miami.

Selection committee chairman Jeff Long said there were some on the committee who felt that Oklahoma should be No. 1. Nonetheless, the committee needed to be relieved in that its main decision this yr was where to seed Michigan State & Oklahoma.

Alabama is the only repeat performer from last season’s inaugural playoff, which followed the sport’s 16-year marriage to a Bowl Championship Series title game.

The Alabama Crimson Tide will face the Michigan State Spartans in the Cotton Bowl at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington Texas.

While last year’s playoff contenders included three college football blue bloods (Alabama, Florida State and Ohio State) and a fourth team, Oregon, that had played for a national title just four years earlier, this year’s mix is more diverse.

While all four teams in this year’s College Football Playoff were their respective conference’s outright champion, suppose that the Playoff bracket was hypothetically expanded to eight teams. No, because I don’t think there was a reaction in Tuscaloosa, while Clemson threw a big pizza party, and there was general happiness on the Oklahoma and Michigan State campuses.

I typically loathe comparisons between the college football and college basketball postseasons, probably because for years the lords of the BCS used the NCAA tournament’s effect on the regular season as a (flawed) argument against a football playoff.

The Spartans turned a botched punt into a last-play, game-winning touchdown at MI. On MSU’s final offensive play of the game, Scott ran to his right and was met at the 1 by a gang of desperate Hawkeyes, but they couldn’t stop him from scoring.

The 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship Game is set for January 11 in Glendale, Arizona, at University of Phoenix Stadium.

Wide Receiver Aaron Burbridge was Michigan State’s leading receiver catching five passes for 61 yards. The Spartans won the Cotton Bowl, the only one for a Big Ten other than Ohio State’s over Texas A&M in 1987.

Alabama (12-1) pulled away from Florida in the SEC Championship to win, 29-15. And although Michigan State had a string of national titles in the 1950s and ’60s and has experienced a resurgence under ninth-year coach Mark Dantonio, it has tended to be overlooked in favour of Big Ten rivals such as Michigan and Ohio State. “We’re going to have to handle that”.

Sugar Bowl: Oklahoma State (10-2) vs. MS (9-3), January 1. Long used Michigan State’s win over Iowa on Saturday night as one reason for the jump to No. 3.

QUOTE TO NOTE: “This has been a great journey these last seven years, but where we are right now is simply a reflection of a lot of hard work by a lot of great people”. “All four of these teams were very close”. The Sooners are aiming for their first national title since 2000. Not even the Danny Ford-led Tigers of 1981 won as many games as the 2015 Clemson team, which will need to win twice more in order to hoist the national championship trophy.

The entirely different group of Michigan Sate players wearing the green and white now will get to find out just how different of a program they really have from that Kirk Cousins-led group, for better or worse. Long also touted a season-opening victory over Wisconsin, which didn’t finish in the top 25 but was 9-3.

“Getting in is one thing, which maybe we were a little bit too happy with past year”, Saban said to the camera during the selection show, wearing a loose sweater and the tightest smile. Although three of the 4 teams have losses on their resume, there was nary a touch of discontent over the sector in that will play for the championship of college football.

Instead of allowing that dud to define their season, quarterback Baker Mayfield and the Sooners went on a seven-game winning streak, outscoring opponents 364-136.