The BCS era of college football will close with a Southern flair as No. 1 Florida State and No. 2 Auburn will meet Jan. 6 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., for the national championship.
Auburn, the SEC winner by virtue of its worst-to-first victory against Missouri in the Georgia Dome on Saturday, vaulted into position to give the SEC its eighth consecutive BCS title by virtue of Ohio State’s upset loss in the Big Ten Championship game late Saturday. Next season, the sport moves to the four-team College Football Playoff.
Auburn will be looking for its second BCS title in four years. FSU, the ACC champion, returns to the title game for the first time since 2000, and will be looking to win a second BCS crown and third national title overall.
The bowl schedule fell in line Sunday night after the final BCS ranking and BCS bowl selections were released.
The Chick-fil-A Bowl on Dec. 31 at the Georgia Dome gets a bit of coup, pairing ACC runner-up No. 24 Duke against No. 21 Texas A&M in what will likely be Johnny Manziel’s final college appearance. The 2012 Heisman winner and redshirt sophomore seems likely to make himself available in the NFL Draft in May. It will be the first time a Heisman winner has played in the Chick-fil-A game.
No. 22 Georgia will play Nebraska in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., on Jan. 1, in a rematch of last season’s Capital One Bowl, and Georgia Tech will play Ole Miss in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn., on Dec. 30. Those two teams haven’t played since 1971. The ACC has 11 teams in bowl games; the SEC has nine.
In the BCS bowls, Ohio State fell to No.7, into the Orange and will meet No. 12 Clemson on Jan. 3. No. 4 Michigan State, the Big Ten winner, and Pac-12 champ and No. 5 Stanford will play in the Jan. 1 Rose, and No. 11 Oklahoma will meet No. 3 Alabama in the Jan. 2 Sugar. No. 6 Baylor will play No. 15 Central Florida, an automatic qualifier, in the Fiesta on Jan. 1.
The Ohio State-Clemson meeting is sure to resurrect memories for fans of both schools: The only time they have met was the 1978 Gator Bowl in Danny Ford’s first game as a head coach and in the legendary coach Woody Hayes’ last game. Hayes was fired the morning after the upset loss to the Tigers because he punched a Clemson player in anger following an interception in the game’s final minutes. That video will be played numerous times over the next month.
The Buckeyes will have to regroup after missing out on what would have been a fourth BCS title game. “It’s going to haunt all of us, I imagine, for a little while,” Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said. “But that’s part of the game.”
FSU completed the season as the only major school to go unbeaten at 13-0, led by freshman quarterback Jameis Winston. He is the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy this Saturday in New York and he would be the ninth Heisman winner to play in the BCS title game. The Seminoles played in the first three BCS games.
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