Rose Bowl Playoff results: Oregon annihilates Florida State

Stanford’s Rose Bowl halftime show offended America again. The Rose Bowl has now commented:

The band’s retort (here’s the show, the script, and lots of people yelling about it):

College football fans spent decades telling the sport’s powers that a multiple-round championship would be good for the sport. Huh, it’s like the fans knew what they were talking about all along.

It certainly wasn’t the TV networks that held back progress, as ESPN had a solid idea all along of how huge the Playoff would be. The network gambled $7.3 billion for the first 12 years of Playoff broadcasts, and it’s clear to all that that wasn’t much of a gamble.

Oregon expects a good fight from Ohio State in the national championship next week, and according to Ducks center Hroniss Grasu, it will be a lot better than the fight his team got from Florida State in their 59-20 blowout of the Seminoles.

Via USA Today:

The first two College Football Playoff semifinals have been a hit with television ratings, according to ESPN’s Josh Krulewitz. The Rose Bowl brought in 28.2 million viewers and the Sugar Bowl saw 28.3 million, reportedly becoming the two most-watched cable programs ever.

Last year’s Florida State-Auburn national title game brought in 25.57 million viewers. The 2006 Rose Bowl, broadcast on network channel ABC, was the most highly watched championship game, with 35.6 million tuned in.

Well, he’s not wrong! It’s a silly point, and people will poke fun at it on Twitter, but whatever. It’s funny and it’s harmless.

The two teams in the National Championship each enter with a loss — Ohio State to Virginia Tech on Sept. 6 and Oregon to Arizona on Oct. 2. — while Florida State finished the season at 13-1.

College football’s showcase day, now headlined by two College Football Playoff games, lived up to any and all expectations. Let’s look at the key numbers from January 1’s five bowls.

And by allowing just three points in Minnesota’s final five possessions following Williams’ touchdown, they sent defensive coordinator Dave Steckel, recently named Missouri State’s head coach, out a winner.

1. Florida State completely collapsed. You know what they say about pressure: it bursts pipes or creates diamonds. Or sometimes, when Oregon is running you to the limit of your football credit, it takes your diamonds, flushes them down the world’s biggest pipes, and then stuffs you into the great sucking drain of history.

3. They were going to steal a title, and you were going to haaaaaaate how they did it.

HAHAHA Marcus Mariota what are you doing?

Is he getting tickled in this GIF? What is happening? I have no idea, but I can’t stop laughing. Football is fun.

The SEC won seven BCS championships in a row. Perhaps you heard about it. Florida State ended that run last year, beating Auburn to win the final BCS game.

That ended the conference’s run, but it continued the region’s. Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and their neighboring states just pumped too much talent onto the field for everybody else to contend with. But things change.

This will be Oregon’s second appearance in an officially ordained national championship game. The Ducks’ first came in the 2010 season’s BCS Championship, when they lost, 22-19, to Cam Newton’s Auburn in Arizona.

Ohio State made three BCS Championships, winning 2002’s against Miami and losing 2006’s and 2007’s to Florida and LSU, respectively.

After Oregon beat Florida State 59-20 in the Rose Bowl, some Oregon players chanted “no means no” to the tune of the FSU war chant, referencing the sexual assault allegations against Seminoles quarterback Jameis Winston that did not result in any charges or school discipline.

Oregon coach Mark Helfrich told the AP that those players will be disciplined for that chant.

Oregon won a ticket to the College Football Playoff championship game with its 59-20 win over Florida State on Thursday in Pasadena. The Ducks also essentially re-wrote the Rose Bowl record books, as well, with a stunning offensive display (though Florida State got some, too, in the blowout). Overall, there were 14 broken records in the Granddaddy of Them All, which began in 1902 and has been played 101 times.

Here are Oregon players after beating Florida State in the Rose Bowl:

Yes, that’s the FSU war chant and yes, they’re saying “no means no” in reference to Jameis Winston. Winston was accused of rape in December 2012, but was never charged with a crime and was cleared by a third-party judge in a university conduct hearing.

Florida State lost by 39 points -- 59-20 -- to Oregon in the Rose Bowl on Thursday in the first loss of quarterback Jameis Winston’s college career. Despite the blowout loss, Winston claimed that it was FSU that beat itself, not that the Ducks were necessarily the better team.

After losing for the first time in two years -- a 59-20 demolition in the Rose Bowl at the hands of Oregon -- many Florida State players left the field immediately after the game without shaking hands with the Ducks players.

ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit was not pleased.

Oregon now waits for the result of the Sugar Bowl between Alabama and Ohio State, with 11 days to prepare for an historic championship game. Florida State goes back to Tallahassee to pick up the pieces and face its post-Jameis Winston reality.

The 2014 edition of Winston was not close to the transcendent force he had been in 2013, and when the Seminoles needed him to deliver in the second half Thursday, Winston folded. With Florida State down 19 points and facing a 4th and 5 from the Oregon 30 late in the third quarter, Winston dropped back, rolled right, then -- in the face of Oregon pressure -- fell backwards and dropped the ball. Oregon recovered the unforced error and returned it for a touchdown (GIF via ESPN).

Oregon is well on its way to the College Football Playoff championship game with a thrashing of Florida State in the Rose Bowl. Oregon is very good at football. The Chicago Cubs are very bad at baseball. They haven’t made the playoffs since 2008 and haven’t won a World Series since 1908.

Luckily, Oregon is so good that the Ducks decided to speed up the Theo Epstein rebuilding effort and take the Cubs to the playoffs this year!

Jameis Winston’s kinda falling apart here at the end of the Rose Bowl. Jimbo Fisher has some words of advice and/or warning for him:

“Calm the f*** down or you’re going to the bench.” : (

Via ESPN

Some background: two years ago, two Florida players accidentally ended up blocking each other in the Gators’ loss to Georgia Southern. It made for an entire offseason of laughter at UF’s expense, with FSU fans certainly enjoying their fair share of chuckles, as they should’ve.

On fourth and five with the game on the line, Jameis Winston scrambled and stayed alive, juking numerous Oregon defenders. Then, as he attempted to get the pass off, he fell backwards and fumbled, leading to an Oregon touchdown.

The ref fell too.

Oregon had been doing work with Marcus Mariota screen passes to wide receivers in trips formations all game long. One receiver drops back to receives the pass, the other two step up and block, and you get 5, 10, 15 yards. Florida State’s corners started to play for this a bit, stepping up to give themselves a better chance of making a play near or behind the line of scrimmage.

That’s what makes this 30-yard touchdown pass to Darren Carrington so dirty: (GIFS via ESPN)

Here they are doing “Single Ladies:”

They are not the first marching band to do Beyonce -- I recommend Southern University’s renditions of “Flawless“ and ”Love on Top,” and Cal and Michigan both did halftime shows -- and hopefully they will not be the last.