Notre Dame’s semifinal blowout is a reminder of how hard it is to win the Playoff

Through five College Football Playoffs, there have been four absolute drubbings in semifinal games. It briefly looked like there would be a fifth, but after going down 28-0 early to Alabama, Oklahoma fought hard enough in 2018’s Orange Bowl to stay off this list:

The Irish did some things right but still never had a chance against Clemson, which advanced to play Alabama in the National Championship on January 7.

In each of these semis, it has been abundantly clear that one team didn’t belong on the field with the other. These were poor performances that made you wonder if the losers should have been in the Playoff in the first place. These Playoff games are still a small sample, but they speak to a broader thing about the sport.

There just aren’t that many teams built to win national championships. Just because there’s a playoff with X number of teams doesn’t mean that they all are good enough to win it:

Over the past 25 seasons, every team that has won or shared a national title has had an S&P+ rating in the 95th percentile or better, with rounding. The worst was 2002 Ohio State at 94.8 percent. However, all but three teams (four, if you include UCF in 2017) were in the 98th percentile or higher. Usually the elitest of the elite earn the ring.

That’s even clearer when we visualize it.

My colleague Bud Elliott tracks the Blue-Chip Ratio every year. Basically, you need over 50 percent four- and five-star recruits on your roster to have a legitimate chance at winning the national title. Of the semifinal blowout victims so far, one comfortably cleared the 50 percent benchmark (Ohio State in 2016). A few cleared it barely.

2014 Oregon had signed 41 percent blue-chips when it drubbed Florida State, which didn’t have a demonstrative ratio (56 percent). Then the Ducks got run over by an Ohio State team that had signed 68 percent blue-chips, losing the title game by three touchdowns. The next year, 2015, Michigan State (21 percent) couldn’t keep up in a semifinal with Bama (77). In 2018’s Cotton Bowl, Notre Dame (51) got crushed by Clemson (61).

You could even include 2017 Clemson in this group if you wanted. The Tigers (56 percent) hung around with Alabama (80) for a while in the Sugar Bowl but couldn’t keep up forever and lost 24-6. (The gap between them is a few points tighter this year.)

Oregon’s 2014 season might be the one that speaks the most to the task at hand: you don’t need just one win against college football’s elite class. You need two. And that’s hard.

Other sports also weed out their less talented teams, but with longer playoffs. The NBA pretty much always has its best team as its champion, for instance, but it takes two months. What college football lacks in a long playoff to cut down on variance, it makes up for in a wide gap between the top two or three teams and the rest of the really good ones.

Meeting the 50 percent Blue-Chip Ratio can get you in the Playoff VIP club at the dance — or you can work around it and at least get in the door — but good luck sticking around without a lot of talent.

If you watched Florida State at all in 2014, you knew the Noles were pulling everything out by the hair of their chinny-chin-chins. They were 17th in S&P+. They were only about two touchdowns better than the average FBS team, and S&P+ said they were a full touchdown worse on a neutral field than the Oregon team that turned out to beat them by 39.

FSU, Michigan State, and Notre Dame were all heavy Vegas underdogs before their Playoff blowouts, and S&P+ agreed they should lose by a lot. The 2018 Irish were 10.5-point dogs in Vegas and 7-point dogs per S&P+.

ND and Michigan State especially were solidly built teams that did enough to get Playoff berths, sometimes against not-awesome schedules. That counts for something, but the numbers were telling us after a full season of work that these teams were flawed and ripe for comfortable losses against teams that could expose them.

Ohio State’s loss to Clemson in 2016 is the big outlier in this group. The Buckeyes were a betting favorite before getting whooped, something they’ve made a trend out of since.

Ohio State had a non-elite offense (No. 23 in S&P+) up against an elite Clemson defense (No. 6), and the Buckeyes got exposed. Sometimes it happens when an eventual national champion has had a month to scheme for even a really good opponent.

The Playoff semifinals are weed-out classes. The best teams almost always get through, but they’re good for ensuring the best teams really are the best teams.

So far, it’s worked. The four national champs in the Playoff era have finished first, first, second, and second in S&P+. Bama and Clemson are in the top two spots heading into this season’s title game. It’s time for the final exam.