Ultimate Guide to College Football Playoff
In the buffet that is college football's bowl season, the playoff is the chocolate fountain. No matter how much you've gorged yourself on the offerings to this point, there's no way you can pass up the main attraction. You can start that diet next week.
The semifinal pairings of the College Football Playoff, set for New Year's Eve, come near the end of the 40-game bowl schedule, and despite their odd placement on one of the biggest party nights of the year, they certainly don't lack intrigue. Two longstanding blue bloods of the game and two members of the new regime are matched up perfectly so that no matter who emerges from the Orange and Cotton bowls, we're assured a dandy of a national championship game on Jan. 11 in Glendale, Arizona.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
A year after being shut out of the inaugural playoff, the Big 12 has a strong entrant in Oklahoma, arguably the hottest team in the country after it bulldozed through the conference's best teams in November. The Sooners are so well-regarded that Las Vegas bookmakers (per OddsShark.com) have them as the favorites over top-seeded Clemson, the only unbeaten team in the country and the only program whose coach still believes in the motivating power of pizza parties and trips to amusement parks.
The only repeat visitor to the playoff is Alabama, the perpetual SEC contender that's eager to redeem itself after it lost to eventual champion Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl a year ago. The Crimson Tide will get the chance to do so against another Big Ten team, Michigan State, which faced the toughest road of any semifinalist after it lost late in the season and then needed every inch on a 22-play drive that beat Iowa for the conference title.
There's no far-and-away favorite among the four, nor is there a team with little shot to win it. Four teams, two games and plenty of reasons to do your New Year's celebrating in front of the biggest television screen you can find.
Orange Bowl: No. 1 Clemson vs. No. 4 Oklahoma (Thursday, 4 p.m. ET, ESPN)
If you are one of the roughly 40,000 people who attended the 2014 Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando and still happen to have your ticket, don't throw it away: It could someday be a collector's item.
It won't be as valuable as a stub from this year's Orange Bowl national semifinal—it'll be more like a Fleer rookie card than one from Topps or Upper Deck—but that otherwise uneventful 40-6 drubbing by Clemson over Oklahoma helped plant the seeds for two of this season's playoff qualifiers.
Even though that game didn't feature those teams' biggest stars, quarterbacks Deshaun Watson (Clemson) and Baker Mayfield (Oklahoma), it still resonates with each club. For the Tigers, the convincing win capped a fourth straight 10-win season and set the stage for perfection, as Clemson brings a program-record 16-game win streak to South Florida.
For the Sooners, the blowout loss helped spur much-needed changes that have reinvigorated the program.
Oklahoma shuffled its coaching staff and threw out the run-based offense that, despite featuring FBS single-game rushing record-holder Samaje Perine, didn't get the job done the last few years. The Sooners went back to the Air Raid, with which coach Bob Stoops' earlier teams excelled, and improved from 36.4 points per game to 45.8.
Clemson is doing much the same thing it did a year ago—minus the shuffling at quarterback that came with Watson's various injuries. Though signal-caller Cole Stoudt piloted that bowl win over Oklahoma last December, the Tigers otherwise struggled when Watson wasn't operating the offense.
Now at full strength—and seemingly getting better with each game—Watson has Clemson playing the best football it ever has, yet the top-seeded team is getting treated like a significant underdog. But that's par for the course for the one team in this playoff quartet that doesn't have a history of top-tier success, as Bleacher Report's Greg Couch wrote: "The term means more than just betting odds and point spreads. It's about a psyche and a personality and a belief system. And the truth is, until Clemson actually pulls off 'the big win,' it is going to have some doubts deep down."
X-Factor
If there's one thing this game is going to come down to, it's the quarterback battle. Watson finished third in the Heisman Trophy balloting, while Mayfield was fourth. Though neither was the sole reason their team is in position to win a national title, they've had the biggest impacts of any individuals.
According to Matt Brown of Sports on Earth, this is just the 11th time that quarterbacks who finished in the top five in the Heisman race have met in a bowl game the same season.
"Including Thursday, four of the last seven will have featured Oklahoma," Brown wrote. "It will also be the fifth to take place in Miami."
It's the first time it will happen in the playoff.
Between them, Watson and Mayfield have accounted for more than 655 yards of offense per game and 83 touchdowns, including 18 on the ground. Neither has been slowed much this year, but if one team can figure out a way to keep the other's dynamic passer from dominating, that could be the difference.
Don't Forget the Defenses
As much attention as these teams' offenses get, neither would have gotten this far if not for some impressive defensive performances. Clemson and Oklahoma are tied for 10th in the nation in yards allowed per play (4.68).
That is somewhat fitting, in that Tigers defensive coordinator Brent Venables spent 13 seasons (1999-2011) working for Sooners head coach Bob Stoops.
Venables' latest defense ranks seventh in yards allowed per game (295.7) after it was first overall last season (260.8). In 2012, Venables inherited the No. 71 defense in the country and has had that unit on a constant rise ever since.
Oklahoma's defense, which ranks 31st overall (350.7), held the explosive offenses in the Big 12 to 347.2 yards and just 20.4 points per game.
Prediction
Clemson has looked like the most complete team all season long, so why should that change now?
The Tigers have vanquished all of their demons, from ACC rival Florida State to the now-defunct term "Clemsoning," and they're playing at the site where both one of their biggest triumphs and most dubious failures occurred.
West Virginia put a sour stamp on Clemson's breakthrough 2011 season, which included a conference title, with a 70-33 beatdown in the Orange Bowl. Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney went out and snapped up Venables to fix his defense, and two seasons later, Clemson was back in the Orange Bowl. This time, it came out with a 40-35 win against an Ohio State team that a year later won the national title.
The Sooners' return to greatness has provided a boost for the Big 12 and college football as a whole, but the Tigers are the best story out there—and the final chapter hasn't been written.
Clemson 34, Oklahoma 28
Cotton Bowl: No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Michigan State (Thursday, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN)
Like its partner, this semifinal game didn't become official until the playoff selection committee finalized its rankings on Dec. 6, but in many ways the clash between Alabama and Michigan State has been 20 years in the making.
Flash back to 1995, when Nick Saban was in his first season as head coach at Michigan State. One of his first hires was then-39-year-old Mark Dantonio, whom he plucked from Kansas to be the Spartans' defensive backs coach. Dantonio stuck around in 2000 when Saban left for LSU, and after three-year stints as Ohio State's defensive coordinator and Cincinnati's head coach, he took over at MSU in 2007.
"Had I never had that opportunity to go to Michigan State, I wouldn't be sitting here right now," Dantonio said, per Noah Trister of the Associated Press.
Now Dantonio and Saban stand in the way of each other's quest for a national championship. For Saban, it would be his fifth (and fourth at Alabama), while Dantonio is hoping to bring the Spartans their first title since 1966.
Coach and mentor have only met once before, in the 2011 Capital One Bowl, and Saban's Crimson Tide cruised to a 49-7 win. That game came at the start of Michigan State's rise. The Spartans had just recorded the first of their five 11-win seasons in six years, while Alabama's 10-3 campaign was a blip in a four-year run from 2009 to 2012 in which it won three national championships.
X-Factor
The Crimson Tide's offensive game plan might be the worst-kept secret in college football. Everyone, including Michigan State, knows Alabama is going to hand off to Heisman-winning running back Derrick Henry as many times as possible, a formula that has worked to perfection of late.
Henry, who has put every bit of his 6'3", 242-pound frame into each of his FBS-leading 339 carries, told Fox Sports' Stewart Mandel that the key to his success is being the aggressor instead of letting others dictate the action.
"You've just got to deliver the first blow," Henry said. "In football, you're going to get hit. Don't let someone deliver the hit to you. You've got to deliver the hit to them."
The Spartans rank ninth nationally in rushing defense, allowing 113.1 yards per game. Take away the 279 yards they surrendered to Air Force's option attack in September, and that yield dips to 99.3 (and from 3.6 to 3.3 yards per carry). Michigan State held notables such as Oregon's Royce Freeman and Ohio State's Ezekiel Elliott well below their per-game and per-carry averages.
The Spartans don't seem scared. If anything, their defenders appear eager for the task of dealing with Henry, who in his last two games has rumbled for 460 yards on 90 carries. Dan Lyons of CollegeSpun.com noted that linebacker Riley Bullough tweeted congratulations to Henry for winning the Heisman, while fellow linebacker Jon Reschke told 247Sports' Mike Wilson that "We are going to have to hit him harder—harder than we've ever hit anyone else. It's a challenge we are accepting."
A Tale of Two Coordinators
Once Alabama's run in the playoff is over, defensive coordinator Kirby Smart will devote 100 percent of his focus on his first head coaching gig at Georgia. Until then, he's prepared to balance the two jobs as best he can.
Ask him, and he'll tell you: How he does in his final game or games with the Crimson Tide will go a long way toward his success in the future.
Smart has overseen some of the greatest defenses in the country in his nine seasons at Alabama. The current unit ranks second nationally with just 258.2 yards allowed per game. It was inevitable that he'd venture out on his own to take a head coaching job, though not before sticking around to finish what he'd started with the Crimson Tide.
Though he might not have had a choice.
"The defensive line cornered me in a room and said if I didn't stay there'd be an altercation," Smart joked, per Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
While it wasn't surprising that Smart landed a job, the fact that Crimson Tide offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin's name was hardly mentioned during the recent coaching carousel was amazing. After his first season in Tuscaloosa, during which he turned career backup Blake Sims into a record-setting quarterback, it seemed like the former Tennessee and USC head coach was destined to get a third crack at running his own program.
"In his second year of his most successful stop, many are wondering why Kiffin is still there," Bleacher Report's Adam Kramer wrote. "Many are wondering why he hasn't been named a head coach just yet."
Unless an NFL opportunity pops up—the infamous "Black Monday," when pro coaches are seemingly fired en masse after the regular season ends, is a week away—or more college jobs become available, it looks like Kiffin will be back for at least a third year with Alabama.
Prediction
It sounds like a flimsy excuse, but Saban said his team wasn't properly prepared for last year's semifinal game against Ohio State. Given a second chance in the new championship format, don't expect the Crimson Tide to lack in focus or planning.
Winners of 10 straight since a home loss to Ole Miss, Alabama has arguably been the best team in the country during that stretch. Henry's dominance on the ground is just one of the pieces to that puzzle, with the others being senior quarterback Jake Coker coming into his own and the defense putting forth one stalwart effort after another.
Only three of the Crimson Tide's last 10 opponents have topped 300 yards, and the defense has forced 19 turnovers in that span. Alabama has also recorded four defensive touchdowns and four special teams scores along the way.
Michigan State, on the other hand, has had to fight tooth and nail several times to get to this point. Even before they needed that epic 22-play drive to outlast Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game, the Spartans won five other games by one score—twice taking their only lead with no time left on the clock.
The Crimson Tide will play for another national title after this one.
Alabama 29, Michigan State 19
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter @realBJP.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
