College Football Championship

Two undefeated teams made it to the championship game. In the first game featuring SEC VS B10, Michigan beat Alabama in overtime to advance. For a while, it looked like Alabama would play their SEC card ("it just means more"), and win the game. Michigan kept giving them a short field; their TD drives were 44 and 55 yards, and when they stalled their kicker made 50+ yards FGs. But after giving up three straight scores and losing the lead, Michigan completed a 75 yard drive with a TD with 1-1/2 minutes to go to tie the game. In OT, Bama won the coin flip and choose defense first. Michigan scored in two plays. Alabama was at the 3 yard line after 5 plays, on 4th and goal. A low snap forced the Alabama QB to run into the line, and his blockers did not open a hole. That ended the game.

The other semifinal game featured Future SEC vs Future B10, with Washington beating Texas. Washington kept scoring TDs in the first half, and Texas kept matching them to tie the game. Washington scored three times in the 3rd quarter and start of the 4th to take a 13 point lead and looked to be cruising. Then, they tried to "Coug it" ala their little brother, and let Texas back into the game. With a minute to go, Texas kicked a FG to pull within 6 points. Washington recovered the onside kick, and proceeded to go nowhere on 3 plays, commit a false start penalty on 4th and 5, and punt it back, only to interfere with the kick reception and give Texas 15 yards. With 45 seconds left, Texas moved down the field to the 12 yard line. But in the final 15 seconds, Texas completed a pass for a 1 yard loss (very strange play) then threw 3 incomplete passes to end the game. Washington hung on and all over Seattle people returned the AEDs to their cabinets.

So we have a B10 vs Future B10 final, and the Southern states will start watching basketball now.

In non-championship bowl games, Oregon slept through the 1st quarter of their game with Liberty (Jerry Falwell's school) and trailed 6-3. They then proceed to blitz them for 4 TDs in the 2nd quarter, and cruised through the 2nd half to win 45-6.
Oregon State missed the bus and Notre Dame won 40-8 against some neighborhood kids. In other bowl games, oh heck, I didn't watch any of them, so who cares.

The conference championship games are complete, and there were some barn burners today.  Oregon beat Penn St. by a touchdown.  Georgia beat Texas in OT. SMU fell behind big, roared back to tie, and lost when Clemson made a walk-off 56 yard field goal.  ASU romped over Iowa St.  And Boise St. beat UNLV.  Four winners get an automatic bye and a #1-#4 seed in the College Football Playoff bracket; and likely Clemson will be seeded near the bottom of the bracket as they would not have been in without winning.

The rest of 12 team College Football Playoff field is decided tomorrow.  We thought there was always drama with the 4-team playoff when the Committee leaves out a deserving team (see undefeated FSU last year), and the 12-team format would resolve that.  Not so fast.  There will be some drama to see who gets the #5-#8 seeds and a home game.  The big drama is who's the last team in.  Will it be SMU (11-1 regular season, undefeated in conference, 3 point non-conf. loss to a #18 BYU team, barely lost their championship game) or Alabama (9-3 regular season, lost to unranked Vanderbilt, #7 Tennessee, and unranked Oklahoma, but beat #5 Georgia, #14 So. Carolina, and #19 Missouri, plus it's the SEC, baby).  The cynical view is of course it's Alabama.  Hopefully SMU will get in and 'Bama fans can cry on the call-in shows and demand their new coach be fired.