It was a fantastic college football bowl season and as we look back, here’s what we learned from the College Football Playoff and bowl games.
I’m never a fan of having the final major college football bowl games on Jan. 2. It just felt weird having the Rose Bowl and the Cotton Bowl being played but feeling like afterthoughts.
That’s just how the games played after the College Football Playoff tend to feel. If people didn’t watch the Cotton Bowl, they missed out on a truly great game.
The Rose Bowl was a defining moment for Sean Clifford and to a lesser extent, James Franklin. I know lot of people have criticized him but the head coach just posted another 11-win season and another major bowl victory, as well as the first Rose Bowl win since 1994.
Bowl games (outside of the College Football Playoff) don’t mean what they used to, but that win was significant for Penn State.
Tulane’s comeback win over USC, which capped a 10-win turnaround (going from 2 wins to 12) completed the greatest statistical turnaround in college football history and left even hungrier for a 12-team playoff.
Here’s a look at some key takeaways from bowl games and the College Football Playoff, and I started with why playoff expansion can’t come soon enough.
Bowl games show why a 12-team playoff is needed
How fun would it be to see Tulane play another game? That’s one thing I was thinking after the Green Wave rallied to beat Caleb Williams and the Trojans. It was a fantastic game and would have been a great matchup for the 12-team playoff.
I know those two teams probably wouldn’t have played in a 12-team bracket this season, but either way, it would be fun to see the Green Wave advance and face Georiga in a quarterfinal game.
That’s coming in a couple of years but it’s too long to wait. The Alabama Crimson Tide was another reminder of why it’s needed. Is anyone telling me the Tide couldn’t beat Georgia?
I think Alabama would be favored against any team in college football, except the Bulldogs and that’s even more true after the beating they put on Kansas State, a team that beat TCU.
There are a lot of kinks to work out with the future College Football Playoff schedule, yet it’s clear to me that going to 12 teams is going to be an incredible move for college football.
And after this 2022-23 bowl season, it can’t get here soon enough. We won’t need these ridiculous standards and comparisons and eye tests to determine who deserves a shot at a national title, it will be decided on the field and I for one think it’s going to be amazing.
There will be blowouts. There will also be lots of games like we saw in the Cotton Bowl and the College Football Playoff.
It’s clear more meaningful postseason games are needed in college football and expanding the playoff to 12 teams is a good way to start.
TCU is an incredible exception to the college football rule
247 sports puts out the blue-chip ratio rankings every year and the thought behind that is that you need to have at least 50 percent of your roster be blue-chips (4 or 5-star recruits) to win the national championship.
Cincinnati didn’t win the national championship last year and TCU hasn’t won it either, but the Horned Frogs are playing for it and that’s not something anyone expected at the start of the college football season.
TCU was fresh off a 5-7 season and had a new head coach. Beyond that, the Horned Frogs ranked 32nd in the team talent rankings from 247 sports for 2022 with a blue-chip ratio of 21.5 percent.
Max Duggan was incredible and that made up for it, as elite quarterbacks always do, but TCU didn’t look like a team that was less talented than Michigan on Saturday.
Michigan also isn’t ranked that highly in the team rankings. Yet, the Wolverines have 44 blue-chippers compared to 17 for TCU. Transfers have changed that formula.
If you wondered why TCU is a double-digit underdog to Georgia, their lack of blue-chip talent is probably one reason for that, however, the Horned Frogs run to the College Football Playoff and now the national championship game should give a lot of teams hope out there.
Georgia is still Georgia
Georgia is the best team in college football and it would be a surprise if the Bulldogs didn’t win the national championship game next week.
I know the Bulldogs got all they could handle from Ohio State. The Buckeyes were up 14 on Georgia in the fourth quarter and could have easily walked away with the win.
However, I credit Ohio State as much as viewing it as a weakness of Georgia. Don’t get me wrong, the defense isn’t as good as last year. But that was maybe the best defense in college football history.
This Georgia team struggles a little against the pass, at least that’s the narrative but didn’t have any problems with Hendon Hooker. When Georgia plays its best, the defense can be just fine against any offense.
TCU is hard to stop and the Horned Frogs will light off some fireworks. Yet, I still see Georgia winning this game. The Bulldogs have their own really good quarterback and the offense and offensive line in particular is the underrated part of this team.
The bottom line is that even though Ohio State got close, that tells us more about how good Ohio State is. OSU was also a worse matchup for the Bulldogs and if they firing on all cylinders in the national title game, Georgia should win by a couple of touchdowns.
I still think it’ll be exciting though and a four-quarter game.
Big Ten a step behind SEC
A rematch of Michigan and Ohio State for the national championship would have been epic and frankly, it’s something both fanbases will be thinking about for a long time.
Not the rematch necessarily, but the way their teams lost very winnable semifinal games. Ohio State was up two touchdowns in the fourth quarter and had a game-winning field goal attempt. It was a 50-yarder but Noah Ruggles just hit from 49 yards out. It was indoors.
You expect kickers to make that kick more often than not and Ruggles just pulled it left. The Ohio State defense also has questions to answer after allowing 87 points in the last two games.
As far as Michigan, the Wolverines threw two pick-6s, fumbled at the one and had a turnover on downs at the one, and lost by six. This might not be the Chris Webber timeout game but the hurt will linger for a long time, especially if Jim Harbaugh leaves for the NFL.
His call on the Philly special cost his team a shot at a national title, along with a bunch of mistakes and a couple of poor calls by officials.
Yet, it adds to a larger theme of Big Ten struggles in the College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes are the only team in the league to win a playoff game — winning three total. Ohio State won two in 2014 to win the national title and in the semifinals in 2020.
Michigan is now 0-2. Michigan State also lost in the playoff as did Ohio State in trips in 2016, 2019, and now 2022. That’s a 3-5 record overall and a big reason why it’s hard to say the Big Ten is equal to the SEC because, in terms of playoff production, it’s not.
Georgia has as many in the last two years as the Big Ten has ever had and if the Bulldogs beat TCU, it will have more in 2022-23 than the Big Ten has in a decade.
That puts it all in perspective. Plus, if the playoff was expanded this year and Alabama was in, I have a feeling it would be another Alabama-Georgia matchup for the natty.