The College Football Playoff will pit Clemson against Oklahoma and Alabama against Michigan State, both on New Year’s Eve.
The four-team field was set and seeded Sunday by the playoff selection committee, which unveiled an uncontroversial bracket featuring four conference champions with just three losses among them.
Undefeated ACC champion Clemson is the committee’s No. 1 seed and will play No. 4 Oklahoma, the Big 12 champ, in the Orange Bowl. SEC champion Alabama is the No. 2 seed and will face No. 3 Michigan State, the Big Ten champ, in the Cotton Bowl.
The winners will meet for the national championship on Jan. 11 in Glendale, Ariz.
Outside the playoff, the rest of college football’s postseason bowl lineup also was unveiled Sunday.
In Atlanta games, Florida State will take on Houston in the Peach Bowl on Dec. 31 and Alcorn State will play North Carolina A&T in the new Celebration Bowl on Dec. 19, both at the Georgia Dome.
In games involving teams from this state, Georgia will play Penn State in the TaxSlayer (formerly Gator) Bowl in Jacksonville on Jan. 2, Georgia State will play San Jose State in the inaugural Cure Bowl in Orlando on Dec. 19, and Georgia Southern will play Bowling Green in the GoDaddy Bowl in Mobile, Ala., on Dec. 23.
Sunday’s reveal of the four playoff teams carried little suspense.
Clemson (13-0) and Alabama (12-1) were generally and correctly seen as locks to hold on to last week’s Nos. 1 and 2 rankings, respectively, after winning their conference championship games. Michigan State (12-1) and Oklahoma (11-1) also became obvious playoff picks, although it wasn’t clear which one would be seeded No. 3.
As it turned out, the selection committee was impressed enough with Michigan State’s victory over previously unbeaten Iowa in the Big Ten title game to elevate the Spartans to No. 3. They had been ranked No. 5 last week, behind then-No. 4 Iowa and No. 3 Oklahoma.
The Clemson-Oklahoma semifinal matches teams that met last season in the much-lower-profile Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando. Clemson won that game 40-6 as Oklahoma committed five turnovers.
The Alabama-Michigan State semifinal matches Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban against the school where he coached from 1995-1999 and against one of his former assistants, Spartans head coach Mark Dantonio.
“All four of these teams (were) very close,” said selection committee chairman Jeff Long, the athletic director at Arkansas. “But (there were) little differences in resume, in the number of wins, how they won those games, that made the difference.”
He indicated that by Sunday’s final meeting of the committee, no other team was close to cracking the top four.
The College Football Playoff debuted last season, replacing the Bowl Championship Series as the method of determining the national champion. Alabama is the only team from last season’s playoff field back in the tournament this time.
The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, which will host a national semifinal next season, turned over the selection of its teams to the playoff committee as part of the bowl’s move into the top tier of college football’s postseason last year. For this season’s Peach, the committee assigned a matchup of its No. 9 and No. 18 teams: Florida State (10-2) and American Athletic Conference champion Houston (12-1).
“We’re blessed,” Peach Bowl president Gary Stokan said. “We’ve got a great matchup.”
Houston ranks No. 12 in the nation in scoring offense, averaging 40.6 points per game, while Florida State ranks No. 5 in scoring defense, allowing 15.8 points per game.
The game will mark Florida State’s second trip to Atlanta this season. The first one ended badly for the Seminoles: a 22-16 upset loss at Georgia Tech on a blocked field goal that was returned 78 yards for a Tech touchdown as time expired.
Similarly, Georgia will return to Jacksonville for the second time this season, hoping for a better result at EverBank Field than in the Bulldogs’ Oct. 31 loss to Florida.
UGA wide receivers coach Bryan McClendon will serve as the Bulldogs’ interim head coach for the TaxSlayer Bowl. Penn State’s coach is James Franklin, formerly at Vanderbilt.
Georgia (9-3) will be seeking a second consecutive 10-win season. Penn State is 7-5 after losing its last three regular-season games.
The bowl will mark just the second time Georgia and Penn State have met in football. The previous meeting was in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, 1983, when the No. 2-ranked Nittany Lions defeated the top-ranked Bulldogs 27-23.
Atlanta’s new bowl game, the Celebration Bowl, matches the champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and Southwestern Athletic Conference. North Carolina A&T finished in a three-way tie for the MEAC title and won the tiebreaker by virtue of having the highest Sagarin rating among the three teams. Alcorn State defeated Grambling State in the SWAC championship game Saturday.
