College Football Playoff: It’s not time for expansion
2. The semifinals have been a bust
In 2014-2015, the semifinal games were Oregon versus Florida State and Ohio State versus Alabama. The former saw the Ducks blowout the Seminoles 59-20, while OSU upset the Crimson Tide 42-35 with one of the wildest quarterback situations ever in Columbus, OH. Ohio State, the four-seed, eventually won the College Football Playoff Championship over the Oregon Ducks.
The 2015-2016 semifinals were both complete blowouts with Alabama dominating Michigan State 38-0 and Clemson beating Oklahoma 37-17 pitting the top two seeds in the championship game as the college football gods intended. The Tide beat the Tigers 45-40 for the championship.
For the 2016-2017 edition, the semifinals saw another bad duo of games with Clemson beating Ohio State 31-0 and Alabama beating Washington 24-7. That’s back-to-back seasons with horrible semifinal games in the playoff era. Eventually Clemson beat Alabama 35-31 in a one-versus-two matchup.
The 2017-2018 season saw the semifinal contorted by an upset win of Auburn over Alabama in the Iron Bowl. In the BCS era the Crimson Tide, clearly the best team in the country, probably wouldn’t have made the cut and this is where the playoff seemed really important.
The semifinals pitted four-seed Alabama against Clemson and the Tide won 24-6. On the other channel, the Georgia Bulldogs beat the Oklahoma Sooners 45-34 in a really fun contest. The semifinal finally felt really important in the College Football Playoff landscape. Eventually, the Crimson Tide beat the Georgia Bulldogs 26-23 in overtime pitting the third and fourth ranked teams against each other.
In 2018-2019, the semifinals were a complete bust. The Clemson Tigers beat up on Notre Dame to the tune of 30-3 and the Oklahoma Sooners backdoored to a reasonable final score of 45-34 in a game that wasn’t even remotely that close of a contest. The BCS would’ve gotten it right pitting Alabama against Notre Dame for the championship.