Watch Clemson Celebrate Punching A Ticket To The National Championship

Alabama is 13-1 and ranked 2nd in the College Football Playoff rankings.

All the prodding and promoting wasn’t enough to convince many fans to tune in.

Clemson topped Oklahoma, 37-17, in the Orange Bowl.

Yet the inadequacy of that very sentiment – obsessive regionalism! – also enriches this game, which is already rife with enrapturing plotlines.

Alabama’s defense did Clemson’s one-half better, shutting out Michigan State as the Crimson Tide cruised to a 38-0 victory. Total viewership crashed 34.4 per cent, going from 28,271,000 to 18,552,000.

A team once known for such inexplicable stumbles that a derisive term was coined for it — Clemsoning — blew out the No. 4 Sooners over the final two quarters after trailing 17-16 at halftime. If Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart dedicates his game plan to stopping the tandem of Gallman and Watson, it will enable Scott to blow the top off the defense.

The dramatic matchups and results of last year’s games helped draw record-breaking cable audiences for last year’s first College Football Playoff.

Quarterback Deshaun Watson and running back Wayne Gallman, rushed for 295 yards on 50 combined carries.

The game went back and forth through the first half, the Sooners jumping ahead on an impressive first possession that culminated with Samaje Perine’s 1-yard drive.

The matchups of this year’s games weren’t as attractive and both turned out to be lopsided.

Unable to get anything going on the ground left the high-powered Oklahoma offense one dimensional and vulnerable to the Clemson pass rush, which had Baker Mayfield in their sights and scrambling for his life a good part of the game and especially in the second half when the Sooner offense became way too predictable. Cyrus Jones popped up again in the midst of a 21-point third quarter for Alabama with this electrifying punt return touchdown that broke the dam for Michigan State. And that was with ACC Defensive Player of the Year Shaq Lawson on the sideline for nearly the entire game.

He began his news conference Wednesday by explaining why three members of his Clemson flock had been sent home, reportedly after failing a drug test. Swinney told members of the news media to focus on the 112 Clemson players who were doing the right thing and not the three who had gone astray. This is year two of that deal.

The Tigers are headed to the national championship game. And any time you have a team that could accomplish a first of that magnitude, it’s truly something special.

“It’s our job to stop them”, Alabama defensive end Jonathan Allen said.

ESPN was comfortable the semifinals could draw huge audiences on New Year’s Eve, but because of a quirk in the 2015 calendar, the network asked about a year ago to make a one-time change to hold the semis January 2 because it fell on a Saturday.

At this juncture in college football history the Tide is the sport’s Death Star.

He was done for the day as if it was a September game against one of those nonconference cupcakes.

Social networks were virtually silent about the games compared to the year before.

And every single one of them would probably start on most teams, and every single one of them will likely end up on an National Football League team.