College football is known for exciting regular seasons. That didn’t hold true this season, at least not to the level this sport has set for itself. The marquee games often missed, the best games happened on the margins, and the fun was unusually hard to find. The teams that made the Playoff were the four many had pegged for weeks, give or take.
The College Football Playoff is set up to salvage a (relatively) boring season
if there hasn’t been much to engage you outside of your team this year, the ending should give you something.
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
When the Playoff started with the 2014 season, there were worries it would suck up attention and nudge regular-season storylines off the table. If that happens this year, it’ll be a good thing, because this year hasn’t been the rollercoaster we’ve become accustomed to having. Even the non-Playoff bowl slate is unusually short on intrigue.
This year, college football’s similar to basketball. Much like with March Madness, the sport is pushing its chips into the postseason to salvage something out of a banal regular season. And it would be fitting to have fireworks, because the sport’s elite teams are so far ahead of the rest of the pack — hence the relatively boring season in the first place.
The most familiar storyline would be Clemson-Bama Round 4, with a third title-game meeting in four years. But it certainly wouldn’t be boring.
I’m willing to bet the narrative on the 2018 season will shift to a specific place if we get Alabama-Clemson yet again. Does this sound like any other season in the recent past?
- While we’re in it, we view the regular season as meh, without much week-to-week upheaval.
- There are two teams everyone’s pretty sure are head and shoulders above everyone else, with the incumbent national champion a dominant No. 1 in the rankings.
- When you look back on it after the fact, it’s almost like the whole season just built up to the title game, where we got to see the heavyweights go at it.
Sounds a lot like 2005, doesn’t it? That’s when Texas and USC went wire-to-wire in the top two spots in the BCS standings after starting as preseason Nos. 1 and 2. (Texas actually spent one week as No. 1, before returning to No. 2 in the BCS). How many people really think that much about the 2005 regular season, save for a few big moments?
If Clemson and Alabama do deliver a good game, the same thing’ll happen when we reflect on this season. We’ll have had a four-month undercard for the January main event.
A Bama win gives Nick Saban more AP titles than Bear Bryant won and further entrenches the Tide as this era’s best. A Clemson win gives the Tigers “team of the era” status right along with Bama, with two Playoff titles just like the Tide (and two head-to-head wins in championship games).
Yes, please.
The most surprising Playoff storyline would be Notre Dame beating Clemson (the second actually good team it’s faced, really) and Kyler Murray winning a Heisman duel to get OU 60 minutes away from a title.
It’d be a story of vindication for both parties.
If Bama beats Oklahoma, there’s going to be at least some relitigation of the Heisman debate for one of the closest races in the history of the award. But if Murray has a standout performance in an upset, he’ll assert his supremacy as Heisman winner.
Notre Dame fans will tell you their team’s elite despite a not-great schedule. Detractors point to ND not having to play a conference championship game, facing a light schedule with lots of ACC mediocrity, and their best win coming in Week 1 against a Michigan team Ohio State later embarrassed. Beat Clemson, and Irish fans win the argument.
That would set up Murray playing a title game right before he probably gives up football, riding into the sunset on the biggest stage possible. Notre Dame would have one game to make official its re-ascent to the mountaintop for the first time in 30 years.
Or we get some combination of ...
- Alabama vs. Notre Dame, which speaks for itself.
- Oklahoma vs. whoever, which brings up the question: Can Murray beat two elite defenses in a row? And would that quiet down complaints about Big 12 defenses?
Any of these would give us the tantalizing stakes we’ve so dearly missed out of this season.
However this season ends, it built toward the Playoff in a way none of the last four did. Along that line, this Playoff could be true vindication for this season. We’re always going to watch and love college football, but a special Playoff can make a down year OK.
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