Category: History and More

On Monday night, Atlanta will be the center of the college football world and the only teams being talked about will be Alabama and Georgia.

The Crimson Tide (12-1) and Bulldogs (13-1) will meet in the College Football Playoff National Championship, and the one who walks off the turf at Mercedes-Benz Stadium will be covered in confetti and holding the big trophy.

They will be the consensus No. 1, and hailed as such.

Yet there will be a certain satisfaction in being a member of the Central Florida University football team.

Because while the official national champs will have one blemish on their record, UCF players will have been on the only team that has none.

The Knights beat all comers, and with a 13-0 record they are the lone unbeaten in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Their perfect season was capped off with a Peach Bowl victory over Auburn – the team that beat both Georgia and Alabama in the regular season.

Ironically, the conquest came at the same stadium that will crown a champion on Jan. 8.

Yet, UCF was not part of the CFP, ranked No. 12 entering the bowls. And even if the field had been expanded from four teams to eight, trust me – they still would not have been part of the CFP.

Oh, they got invited to the party in the form of a New Year’s Six bowl game, but they were never going to be allowed to participate in the celebration.

When it comes to playoffs, it’s a Power 5 world … and Group of 5 teams don’t even get to live in it.

“I guess to the (CFP Selection) Committee, it’s just what more can we do?” asked Knights linebacker Shaquem Griffin. “We won all of them, and I just feel that we should have had an opportunity to show our talents to any and every team that wants to go against us. There’s no more teams left for us to beat.”

Indeed.

There’s no way of knowing how Central Florida would’ve fared in the playoff, but it would’ve been nice to know, wouldn’t it?

But that was never part of the plan.

Allowing the top Group of 5 team to make a “big” bowl game is really rather cynical, when you think about it.

By throwing them that particular bone, it’s the FBS’s way of saying, “You really don’t belong, but we’ll pretend like you do.”

“Going through the season, I was afraid to say much about the rankings and everything because I’m a little superstitious,” said UCF’s outgoing boss Scott Frost, who is now officially on the job as the head coach at his alma mater, Nebraska.  “And just when a coach starts running his mouth, that’s when you lose the next game. But it wasn’t right. I was watching every week, the Committee sitting in a room and decide this two-loss team must be better than UCF because UCF is in the American (Athletic Conference). Or this three-loss team must be better than UCF.”

The argument, of course, is strength of schedule. Conventional wisdom suggests the SEC, ACC, Big 12, etc., play a tougher slate that any team in the AAC.

OK.

But UCF’s schedule was anything but a breeze.

Both Memphis and South Florida were quality league foes, and they had to beat the Tigers twice.

The Knights played Maryland of the mighty Big Ten and whipped them by four touchdowns. The Terps were 4-8, but it was still a G5 over a P5.

And there was that whole Auburn thing, a 34-27 decision over the No. 7 team in the CFP.

It was a matchup won by the better team.

“It looked like a conscious effort to me to make sure that they didn’t have a problem if they put us too high and a couple teams ahead of us lost,” Frost said of the Selection Committee’s rankings. “And oh, no, now we have to put them in a playoff. But we just beat a team that beat two playoff teams and lost to another one (Clemson) by six points and we beat them by seven.
“And Auburn is a great team. I’m not taking anything away from them. I give them a ton of credit. But these guys deserve everything they get, and they deserve more credit from the Committee than what they got.”

Again, an eight-team playoff wouldn’t have solved the problem because the field would be populated by five Power 5 champions and three Power 5 wildcards.

And an expansion to 16 teams probably won’t happen.

So we have what we have – and what we have are people in a room selecting playoff participants based on plenty of subjective criteria.

As I’ve said over and over again, this is not so much a playoff as it is an invitational.

And a great team like UCF was never going to get invited, despite the fact they did what no other team could this season.

And that’s a shame.

“Like Coach already told us, only thing we can keep doing is winning games,” Griffin said. “And I don’t think we have any more games left to win.”

And now, at last, things get serious.

New Year’s Day has arrived, which means college football fans get to find out which two teams will play for the national championship next week in Atlanta.

But before No. 2 Oklahoma faces No. 3 Georgia in the Rose Bowl at 5 p.m. and No. 1 Clemson tangles with No. 4 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl around 9ish, there are three other bowl games to start your day.

Michigan and South Carolina kick things off in the Outback Bowl at noon; Auburn and Central Florida play 30 minutes later in the Peach Bowl; and the last game of the College Football Playoff undercard is Notre Dame vs. LSU in the Citrus Bowl at 1 p.m.

So, do I plan to park my carcass on the futon and watch football for 13 consecutive hours today?

Nope.

I’m a New York Rangers fan, and they play Buffalo in the NHL Winter Classic today at 1 p.m. I’ll be cheering on the Blueshirts for three hours before joining the ESPN crew in Pasadena because hockey is glorious and outdoor hockey is gloriouser.*

* Not a real word but I’m using it anyway.

Yet if you think – after that admission – that I’m here to bash the bowls, the number of bowls, or the bowl system itself, I’m really not.

Counting the College Football Playoff National Championship, which is set for Jan. 8 at Mercedez-Benz Stadium, there are a staggering 40 bowls involving Football Bowl Subdivision teams.

And every year, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth from traditionalists who think there are too many of them.

A bunch of my friends have spent the last few days debating how bowl games have evolved, and it’s been interesting to hear the wildly varying viewpoints.

As for me, I get the nostalgia for years of NCAA football past. I grew up when college football was still a game – at least as far as we knew.

It was fun back in the day to watch Woody Hayes make an ass of himself when Ohio State played a John McKay-coached Southern Cal squad in the Rose Bowl. Seeing Paul Bryant lead Alabama into action in the Sugar Bowl and Bob Devaney (and then Tom Osborne) guide the fortunes of Nebraska in the Orange Bowl was also cool, and once in a while you might even accidentally get a game that would determine the mythical national championship.

There weren’t nearly as many bowls, so most of them seemed “special” – even though bowls such as the Gator and Liberty never were.

But those days are over and they ain’t coming back.

That being the case, these days I watch a few, miss a bunch, and sometimes I merely stumble upon a game that piques my interest.

Up until last Friday’s Belk Bowl (a wild 55-52 Wake Forest win over Texas A&M that was loads of fun), the only bowl game I had seen was the Bahamas Bowl – and I only watched three quarters of that.

Had my alma mater, UAB, not been playing I wouldn’t even have known or cared it was taking place.

But I’m sure Ohio fans enjoyed their team’s 41-6 beatdown of the Blazers, and regardless of the outcome the teams (and those who traveled to the game) got a trip to the Bahamas.

That doesn’t suck.

But much less exotic locales (I’m looking at you, Shreveport) still hold games involving schools that have fans, and fans of those schools shouldn’t be shamed for watching their team play an extra game during the holidays.

Look, I’ve already made pretty clear I’m more interested in expanded playoffs than bowls.

There are 10 FBS conferences so it seems that a 16-team playoff with 10 conference champions and six wildcard teams would be damn near perfect.

I’d even put an existing bowl in play as the site of the title tilt, joining the pair of semifinal bowls used in the current 4-team format.

Still, even with playoffs there will likely always still be bowls, and that’s absolutely fine.

Is it ridiculous for 6-6 teams (and sometimes 5-7 teams) to earn bowl bids?

Not if the team you pull for is 6-6 or 5-7. And if your favorite sons get invited to the Carl’s Catheters Yellow Snow Bowl in Anchorage, Alaska, you should watch with no apologies.

Hell, I wouldn’t even mind a postseason matchup featuring two 0-12 teams. You could call it the Redemption Bowl and the winner would end the season on a positive note.

Of course that means the losers would be subject to great ridicule, which would not be a positive part of the college experience.

It might be hard to get that particular bowl certified.

At any rate, I spent my last 10 years in the newspaper business covering Georgia and Clemson, so I have a particular interest in their games tonight. But even if I hadn’t, these are still the CFP semifinals, and I want to see what happens in both of them.

And next Monday, I’ll be glued to screen as the last two teams standing go toe-to-toe in Atlanta.

The bottom line is there are those who are going to watch as many bowls as possible, some who will ignore them all and some – like me – who pick and choose.

So, just enjoy the games.

Or don’t.

The University of Alabama football team has won 10 national championships (as recognized by the Associated Press).

Auburn has been awarded two.

And what is the common denominator of all 12 of those crowns?

The team that wore them were also kings of the Iron Bowl.

And that makes complete sense.

Since that game is the traditional regular-season capper for both programs (at least since the series was renewed in 1948), it’s hard to imagine how an Iron Bowl loser can go on to seize the biggest prize in all of college football.

But there’s a chance fans won’t have to imagine it this season because it could actually happen.

Yep, the team that lost the Iron Bowl by two touchdowns is two wins away from a national championship.

On the other hand, the team that earned 365 days’ worth of braggin’ rights in what some consider the nation’s fiercest rivalry received a consolation prize in the form of a Peach Bowl invitation.

In the words of my late Uncle Emery, “That don’t hardly seem right.”

Alabama, of course, was a bit of a controversial College Football Playoff selection, sneaking past Ohio State for the fourth and final spot in the Football Bowl Subdivision’s little tournament.

Bama was 11-1 and runner-up in the SEC West, while the 11-2 Buckeyes were Big Ten champions but suffered a 31-point loss to Iowa earlier in the season. So regardless of who made the cut, there was going to be plenty of pissed-off fans.

This time, many of them live in the greater Columbus, Ohio, area.

Auburn played Georgia in the SEC Championship Game and – if the Tigers had won – they would’ve also been in the “Final Four.”

Conceivably, they could have met the Tide again for the national championship. That would’ve been, by far, the most significant sporting event in the state of Alabama’s history.

Instead, AU – which beat UGA in the regular season – lost the rematch by 21 points. And with three losses, Gus Malzahn’s charges must settle for a New Year’s 6 bowl.

So what’s the big deal about a one-loss Alabama team?

Ordinarily, there would be no big deal. Every team in the CFP has a loss.

No. 1 Clemson was defeated by Syracuse and No. 2 Oklahoma fell to Iowa State.

Those are seen as hiccups.

No. 3 Georgia, of course, was throttled by Auburn before beating the Tigers in the game that mattered most. So the first leg of “The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” carries no weight.

And if the Tide’s lone blemish had come against LSU or Mississippi State or any college football team not located in Lee County, Alabama, it wouldn’t even be a story line among diehards or talking heads.

But Alabama lost to Auburn. And if you believe many fans, that game trumps all.

I’ll let you in on a secret, though … this year, it really doesn’t.

And just moments after Auburn put the finishing touches on a 26-14 win over then No. 1 Alabama, Tide boss Nick Saban was already politicking for a playoff spot.

“I think this team deserves the opportunity to get into the playoff by what they have been able to accomplish and what they have been able to do,” Saban said. “Certainly not in this game, but I think the team we played tonight is a very good football team, probably one of the best teams in the country. I don’t think one game defines who you are. It certainly doesn’t define this team for who they are, and again I am very proud of what they were able to accomplish.”

Even Malzahn was ready to move on shortly after the final whistle blew.

Yeah, his team won the Iron Bowl, but that was hardly the biggest game of the year for him or his players.

“This time of year, very few teams are playing their best football and we’re doing that,” Malzahn said. “We must continue doing that moving forward. Playing Georgia, we know they’re going to have a chip on their shoulder.”

I’m not saying Tide players weren’t hurting when they got on the bus to leave Jordan-Hare Stadium. They were.

And the locker room was a joyous place for the hosts, who snapped a three-game losing skid against the squad from Tuscaloosa.

Yet while Alabama fans might be dealing with some existential angst in the postseason, the only Tigers its players will be concerned with are the defending national champions from Clemson.

And if you don’t think Auburn’s athletes would trade an Iron Bowl win for a CFP berth, you’re kidding yourself.

Granted, this is a moot point if Clemson beats Alabama in the Sugar Bowl semifinal on New Year’s Day. (For the record, I think the Tigers will win the rubber game of their three-game match with Bama and face Georgia in the College Football Playoff National Championship on Jan. 8).

But if the Crimson Tide advances and goes on to win its 11^th national championship, I do have a suggestion for those of you who bleed Blue and Orange.

Make up bumper stickers that read, “Auburn 26, National Champions 14.”