What to make of the now-concluded push for the College Football Playoff? Four teams clearly made the cut, but that’s not the same thing as saying that we know these are the four best teams in college football for the 2015 season.
Is Alabama better than 11-1 Ohio State?
Is Oklahoma better than 10-2 Notre Dame?
Is Michigan State better than 11-2 Stanford? We’ll never find out.
Even within conferences, we don’t — and won’t — know which teams are better.
Is Ohio State better than 12-1 Iowa? Shrug.
Is 11-2 North Carolina better than 10-2 Florida State? Sorry, can’t help you there.
The top four teams deserve to be where they are, but this doesn’t mean every important debate was settled or resolved, either just above or just below the cut line. This line of thought might seem pointless; for fans of the four teams in the playoff, it might even come across as whiny. However, there’s a point to all of this. It’s worth underscoring the fine line between making the playoff and not.
Even for those that made it, the journey involved multiple harrowing moments and close calls.
Alabama, as a point of comparison, had the easiest journey to the playoff, even with its one loss. (Clemson, for instance, needed to run the table to get in.) The decline witnessed in the SEC West, combined with the continued struggles of the SEC East, made the SEC a vulnerable league for the second straight season. Even then, the Crimson Tide needed a few special occurrences to achieve their goals this season. Alabama could have been in big trouble at Auburn had the Tigers not dropped a first-half pick-six which hit a defender at chest level, between the numbers on the jersey. Alabama, leading by only one score, needed a Will Muschamp meltdown in order to get into field goal range and attain a two-score margin. A month earlier, Alabama trailed Tennessee deep into the fourth quarter. Calvin Ridley needed to make a spectacular grab on third and six in order to shepherd the Tide across the finish line.
For the other playoff teams, the road to the final four was even more arduous and fragile.
Clemson led South Carolina by only three points in the fourth quarter, and Deshaun Watson needed to throw a few darts into traffic on third down to pull his team out of the fire. The Tigers needed Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly to chase a point on an ill-advised 2-point try well before the endgame stage of that season-shaping matchup. That miss by the Irish fed into another 2-point try at the tail-end of that contest. The Irish couldn’t gain those three yards, and Clemson hung on for a tenuous but hard-earned 24-22 win. Five weeks after surviving Notre Dame, Clemson got punched in the mouth by Florida State in the first quarter. The Tigers survived and scrapped for the better part of that afternoon. They needed a fourth-quarter surge to claw past the Seminoles due to some remarkable plays by (soon-to-be) Heisman finalist Deshaun Watson.
Even against North Carolina this past Saturday, Clemson made a diving interception at its own 3, followed by a 97-yard touchdown drive to turn the game around. The Tigers then needed an abysmal call on an onside kick to secure that one-score victory over the Tar Heels. That game was fragile for 2.5 quarters before the Tigers took hold of it. Fans might have trusted Dabo Swinney and Mr. Watson all the way, but one or two plot twists had to enter the picture. In early September, Clemson needed Louisville to miss a 38-yard field goal inside the final three minutes of regulation, and the Tigers needed the Cardinals to mismanage another drive which reached the Clemson 36 in the final minute. (Final score: 20-17.)
The Tigers lived on the ledge on several occasions. Don’t let the reality of a 13-0 record obscure that point.
While Alabama and Clemson encountered a few nervous moments, their journeys were Saturday strolls compared to Oklahoma and especially Michigan State.
OU trailed Tennessee, 17-3, and the Vols were on the verge of catching a pass to get near the Sooners’ goal line. However, that pass was dropped, and after that, the Sooners went about the process of mounting a fourth-quarter rally. Oklahoma was one failed play from losing in overtime, but the Sooners and Baker Mayfield delivered the goods. They escaped Knoxville with a win, and while the process wasn’t smooth, the result bought Oklahoma some time in 2015. The loss to Texas didn’t help, but had OU lost to Tennessee, the failure against Texas would have been a season-killer as far as the playoff is concerned.
Later in the season, Oklahoma had to survive a road trip to Baylor. The Sooners then had to sweat out college football’s ultimate one-shot coin flip: a win-or-lose 2-point try by TCU, down one point in the final minute of regulation. Oklahoma knocked down the pass (to an open receiver), and lived to fight another day. Mayfield got knocked out of that game with an injury; true survival defined that particular brush with mortality for the Sooners.
Then, we arrive at Michigan State.
The Immaculate Implosion (aka, Michigan’s botched punt and the subsequent scoop-and-score).
The Connor Cook-less upset of Ohio State in Columbus.
The narrow win over Oregon, all because Vernon Adams overthrew an open receiver on what would have been a go-ahead touchdown in the final minutes.
L.J. Scott’s “sixth-effort” touchdown run in the final 35 seconds against Iowa this past Saturday.
No embellishment is needed to convey the extent to which Michigan State’s truly magnificent season was almost the most fragile of creatures.
This fragility — this dance with defeat and sadness and frustration — affirms the notion that the balance of power for 2015 is anything but certain, even though the top four fell neatly into place.
Stanford, Notre Dame, Ohio State — these three teams in particular (plus 12-1 Houston and 12-1 Iowa) would all like a crack at other members of the top four. The four playoff teams fully deserve what they have, but let’s not allow that point to mean that a top-8 or top-12 pecking order is sure and certain and knowable.
Even in a season bereft of an immediate playoff controversy, the road to that relatively clear endpoint is shrouded in uncertainty, littered with crazy events that leave us wanting more defining matchups, not fewer.
