The College Football Playoff top four has been set, and with no small amount of controversy \u2013 well, regarding the fourth position, anyway. Once again, Ohio State found themselves in the middle of the sea of opinion as to whether they were deserving of a playoff berth. The CFP has only been around for four years, but I don\u2019t think any program will have a stranger history with the playoff selection committee any time soon. In 2014, they needed a massive 59-0 win in the Big Ten championship game just to get to the fourth spot \u2013 and that propelled them to a national title. 2015 saw a Buckeye team that lost just once, by a field goal, to the eventual Big Ten champs Michigan State, get left out of the playoff entirely. In 2016, Ohio State, without a conference title and with a loss against the eventual Big Ten champs in Penn State, leapfrogged the two-loss Nittany Lions into the top four. And now 2017 \u2013 and the Buckeyes found themselves somewhat on the other side of the argument from the previous year. It turns out that a Big Ten title won in sluggish fashion over Wisconsin wasn\u2019t enough in the committee\u2019s eyes to overcome a 31-point loss to a 7-5 Iowa team and an Alabama team that had no conference title but \u201cpassed the eye test\u201d. If you\u2019re a Buckeye fan, this much is guaranteed \u2013 the playoff selection show is appointment viewing and always provides the highest of drama.<\/p>\n
Bowl season is upon us, and with it comes several weeks of interesting matchups, battles for conference supremacy, and programs attempting to springboard into the next season with a big win.\u00a0 How do you, the viewer, attempt to figure out what game to watch? Let me help you out!<\/p>\n
If you want to watch the teams with the fewest combined losses, watch:<\/strong> the Celebration Bowl on December 16. Ah, you thought I’d say one of the semifinal games, right? Both of those games feature two one-loss teams. The Celebration Bowl, which serves as the de facto<\/em> national championship of historically black colleges and universities, pits undefeated North Carolina A&T vs. one-loss Grambling.<\/p>\n If you like your \u201cneutral site games\u201d in name only, watch:<\/strong> the Boca Raton Bowl on December 19, or the Orange Bowl on December 30. Florida Atlantic plays against Akron in its own home stadium in Boca Raton, and Miami faces Wisconsin at their home field, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.<\/p>\n If you want to watch the finish to an improbable season, watch:<\/strong> the Bahamas Bowl on December 22. UAB, which didn’t even have a team last year, plays Ohio in an attempt to win its ninth game this season.<\/p>\n If you tend to scream “run the ball”, watch:<\/strong> the Armed Forces Bowl on December 23. San Diego State features the nation’s leading rusher in Rashaad Penny (2,027 yards); Army leads the country in rushing yards per game (368.1) and has completed just eighteen passes all year.<\/p>\n If you want a really good matchup of conference runner-ups, watch:<\/strong> the Alamo Bowl on December 28. Stanford came up just short against USC in the Pac-12 title game, and TCU ran into the buzzsaw that is Oklahoma’s offense in the Big Twleve championship, but these are two solid teams.<\/p>\n If you want to watch a team that’s really happy to be in a bowl, watch:<\/strong> the Arizona Bowl on December 29. New Mexico State hasn’t been to a bowl game since 1960, the longest streak in FBS. The Aggies will gladly take a trip across the Arizona state line to play Utah State.<\/p>\n If you want a game that seems set about 1,400 miles too far east, watch:<\/strong> the Cotton Bowl on December 29.\u00a0 The classic Big Ten\/Pac-12 matchup of USC and Ohio State really seems like it should take place in Pasadena instead of Arlington, Texas, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n If you want teams who want a better finish to their season in a big bowl game, watch:<\/strong> the Fiesta Bowl on December 30. Washington and Penn State both made New Years’ Six bowl games last year (the Huskies to the playoff in the Peach Bowl; the Nittany Lions to the Rose Bowl), only to end with a loss. This year, one gets a measure of redemption.<\/p>\n In small-school news, the Division III semifinals are this weekend, and the final four have a combined record of fifty-one wins, zero losses. Mount Union, Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Mary Hardin-Baylor, and Brockport play this weekend for the opportunity to make it to the Stagg Bowl, the Division III national championship game. The game is named after Amos Alonzo Stagg, the famous coach at the University of Chicago and the University of the Pacific. This year’s edition of the Stagg Bowl is the last scheduled at Salem, Virginia, where it has been held since 1993. Shenandoah, Texas, and Canton, Ohio, are scheduled to host the next four Stagg Bowls.<\/p>\n Congratulations to AllySun<\/strong>, who wins week 14 in a tie-breaker over Crimson Gator<\/strong>! Both picked the seven games perfectly for a total of 28 points. Paul Herron<\/strong> was next with 27 points, and BoomBoomTX<\/strong> and Jeff4Bama<\/strong> each had 25 points.<\/p>\n Stay tuned for the season wrap-up and the announcement of the winners!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The College Football Playoff top four has been set, and with no small amount of controversy \u2013 well, regarding the fourth position, anyway. Once again, Ohio State found themselves in the middle of the sea of opinion as to whether they were deserving of a playoff berth. The CFP has only been around for four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-systems.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}