With an inevitable element of controversy, the inaugural College Football Playoff set its four-team bracket Sunday, excluding the Big 12 co-champions from a field that features Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State.
The playoff selection committee seeded SEC champion Alabama No. 1, pitting the Crimson Tide against Big Ten champ Ohio State, the No. 4 seed, in the Sugar Bowl. Oregon and FSU, champions of the Pac-12 and ACC, were seeded Nos. 2 and 3 and paired in the other semifinal, which will be played in the Rose Bowl.
Outside the playoff, the rest of college football’s postseason bowl lineup also was unveiled Sunday. Georgia Tech landed a berth in the prestigious Orange Bowl against Mississippi State. Georgia dropped to Charlotte’s Belk Bowl against Louisville. Atlanta’s upgraded Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl drew a matchup of top-10 teams, TCU versus Ole Miss.
Tech earned its Orange Bowl berth by being the highest-ranked ACC team not in the playoff, while Mississippi State got its berth by moving ahead of Michigan State as the highest-ranked SEC or Big Ten team not in the playoff.
Georgia’s assignment to the Belk Bowl might be most notable for two coaches who will be on the opposing sideline: Former Falcons coach Bobby Petrino and former Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham are Louisville’s head coach and defensive coordinator, respectively.
The Peach Bowl, which moved up in the postseason pecking order this year, will pit the nation’s No. 2 scoring offense (TCU) against the No. 1 scoring defense (Ole Miss). TCU also brings the storyline of a team that feels it should have been in the four-team playoff.
The 12-member selection committee shuffled its rankings Sunday to get Ohio State into the field — at the expense of TCU — in the aftermath of the Buckeyes’ 59-0 rout of Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game.
Ranked No. 5 last week, Ohio State moved up to No. 4 — the cutoff for making the playoff. The committee dropped TCU from No. 3 last week to No. 6 despite its 55-3 victory against Iowa State in the interim.
“We want to be able to prove that we were a team that should have been in the playoffs and do all that,” TCU coach Gary Patterson said on a Peach Bowl conference call late Sunday. “I’ve always been a guy that didn’t believe that you worried about spilled milk, and we can’t worry about that at all. … Now we need to move on, and we need to finish this like we started. (The players) are excited about coming to Atlanta.”
Baylor, the other Big 12 co-champ, which defeated TCU 61-58 in October, moved from No. 6 in last week’s committee rankings to No. 5 Sunday.
Committee chairman Jeff Long, Arkansas’ athletic director, said Ohio State’s impressive performance in the Big Ten title game and 11-game winning streak since an early season loss to Virginia Tech propelled the Buckeyes into the top four. But the Big 12’s weak non-conference schedules — particularly Baylor’s — and lack of a league championship game clearly were factors, too.
Rather than choosing between Big 12 co-champs, the committee simply left both out of the playoff.
In the end, Long said the committee felt that Alabama (12-1), Oregon (12-1) and Florida State (13-0) were “clear-cut in that order” as the top three teams and that Ohio State (12-1) was “decisive as No. 4” ahead of Baylor and TCU (both 11-1).
The Big 12, which has 10 members, is the only “Power 5” conference without a league championship game. Under NCAA rules, leagues must have 12 teams to play a title game, although there is movement toward changing that in the future.
The playoff semifinals offer compelling matchups. The Sugar Bowl matches marquee coaches Nick Saban of Alabama and Urban Meyer of Ohio State. The Rose Bowl matches last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston, against this year’s Heisman favorite, Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota.
Both the Sugar and Rose bowls will be played on New Year’s Day. The winners will meet for the national championship in the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium on Jan. 12, a Monday night.
The Peach and Orange bowls are both on New Year’s Eve. In the new postseason pecking order, they join the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Cotton as the six upper-tier bowls and rotating hosts of playoff semifinals. Each of those bowls will host a semifinal once every three years.
Georgia Tech (10-3) and Mississippi State (10-2) embraced their Orange Bowl berths.
“I don’t know if (my players) could be happier going to any bowl out there,” Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said.
“They’re going to be excited to play an opponent … that’s been ranked in the top 10 pretty much all year,” Tech coach Paul Johnson said of his players.
Ole Miss, which opened the season in the Georgia Dome by beating Boise State in a Chick-fil-A Kickoff game, will return to the same building to finish the year in the Peach Bowl. The Rebels are 9-3.
“We would have been excited to be selected by any of the big six (bowls),” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said. “Certainly to return to Atlanta, where we have a fondness for that place … is an honor.”
Charlotte’s Belk Bowl, which Georgia will play in for the first time, is on Dec. 30.
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