Now that the College Football Playoff bracket is set, each team that made it in can see their path forward, whether it be mostly clear, or completely overgrown with the thorns and briars we call other powerhouse football teams. Not every path is created equal, and while every team that got in should be relieved that they’re competing on college football’s biggest stage, how they feel about what comes next is all over the map.
Clemson: Ecstatic
After 3 losses in the regular season and being completely forgotten by the media in the absence of elite players like DeShaun Watson, Trevor Lawrence, or Travis Etienne, Clemson has every reason to be happy to even be here. The tigers had no shot at making an at large bid, but thanks to two of their losses being to non-con opponents Georgia and South Carolina, they still had their path to the playoff, and all routes ran through Charlotte and the ACC title game.
Clemson should be happy with how they took care of business early in the game against SMU, but letting the mustangs get back in the game late should be cause for concern amongst the Clemson coaching staff. Letting a 24-7 lead against a team who was competing in the group of five last year evaporate is something that no team should be proud to carry around. Nonetheless, when it comes to conference championships, style points don’t matter. Clemson should be overjoyed just to be here.
SMU: Relieved
Since we’re talking about the ACC, it’s probably a good time to mention that SMU does still deserve to be in the playoff. The argument that SEC schools get more mulligans because their schedule is allegedly harder based off of preconceived notions about top heavy programs leaking down to the whole schedule is ridiculous on its face. SMU handled business and won their games. A win against a weak opponent is always worth more than a loss against a good opponent. Going 11-1 in the regular season should be rewarded, and thankfully for the mustangs, it was.
Keeping SMU in the playoff was also an important point for maintaining interest in conference championship games. If SMU were to be kept out of the playoff for losing the ACC title game, grounds could be set for teams just inside the bubble to opt out of playing in their title game in order to avoid being removed. SMU being added to the playoff over Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina preserves the integrity of both the regular season and the conference title games.
Indiana and Notre Dame: Hungry
Indiana and Notre dame are entering into their game from extremely similar circumstances. Both teams went 11-1 on the season, did not play in a conference championship, and the lone loss for either team made them look like fools. Neither team has a marquee win, but was dominant against lesser competition all season, with the lone exception of the NIU loss for Notre Dame. Perhaps the most important similarity though, they’re both from the state of Indiana, and they’re both going to be playing in South Bend in round one of the playoffs.
Both teams come into this game with something to prove. Indiana has never been in a playoff before. In all of Notre Dame’s appearances they have never won a game. Both teams played relatively weak schedules and are unproven commodities. Another in-state team is exactly the kind of matchup that you want to have when you need to get your team fired up just to prove a point. Whoever wins this game will finally have that marquee win that might just give them some momentum in their quarterfinal matchup against Georgia.
Tennessee: Overwhelmed
After struggling mightily for most of the college football playoff era, and coming just short of the 4-team playoff under coach Josh Heupel, the Vols are finally getting their chance to compete at the highest level of college football. The Vols also arguably got the most difficult path to the College Football Playoff championship, having to go to the Horseshoe to play Ohio State, deal with Oregon at a neutral site, then if by some miracle they manage to get past those two teams they likely land a date with the Texas Longhorns in the semifinals.
Whoever wins the championship will also have to win two bowl games along the way, therefore acquiring a total of three trophies. If Tennessee is the team that ends up winning the whole thing, they would be the most worthy of any team in the field to have 3 trophies from the 2024-25 postseason. Tennessee should pray for some miracles and hope that if they do make the semifinal that somebody upsets the Longhorns.
Ohio State: Deflated
Ohio State fans might want Ryan Day fired because he hasn’t had success against Michigan, but he keeps finding ways to get to the biggest game in college football’s postseason, so their athletics department isn’t going to send him anywhere. But pairing the fanbases lack of optimism about Ryan Day with the same path through the playoff as Tennessee is not something that buckeye fans should be particularly confident about.
Ohio State can at least have some degree of confidence about their game against Tennessee, simply because it’s at the horseshoe, if nothing else. The two teams should be very evenly matched, but the noise levels in Columbus should be higher than they usually are for a game of this caliber. The money line is not one that I would touch with a ten foot pole, but buckeye fans shouldn’t go into this game thinking that they can’t win it. They might think that the sky is falling after losing to Michigan and missing the Big Ten championship. It’s not.
Penn State and Texas: Confident
Penn State may have gotten the easiest draw of any team that has to play in the first round. A white out in Happy Valley during a playoff game will be one of the most electric environments that college football has ever seen. No environment that SMU has played in this year comes even remotely close to the noise that Nittany Lion faithful are about to bring to Beaver Stadium. Penn State is high on the list of places that when it gets rocking, you don’t want to be the visiting team.
With a Penn State win, they get to play Boise State at a neutral site. Ashton Jeanty is not to be underestimated, but he is the sole identity of the Boise State team, and slowing him down at all will be enough for an extremely balanced Penn State team to lock up a victory and make their way to the semifinals.
The Longhorns should be similarly pleased about their draw with Clemson in the first round, who had it not been for the ACC championship, they wouldn’t even be here. Clemson isn’t a good enough team to be an at large, and Texas should walk all over them. Arizona State may be a slightly more concerning second round matchup for the Longhorns than Boise State is for Penn State. If the same Arizona State team that boat raced the Iowa State Cyclones in the Big 12 championship shows up to play Texas, then they might be able to grab a win that becomes the story of the new playoff and leads to a lot of discourse about conference realignment. Anything less than their best though, and Texas should feel very good about making a deep run in the playoffs.
Arizona State and Boise State: Nervous
These two schools both earned first round byes by being in the top 4 conference champions, but they are also the sole representatives for their conferences in the playoff, and in the case of Boise State, the sole representative for the entire group of five. Arizona State and Boise State are carrying more pressure than any other team in this playoff, and barring a major upset, both teams will have to face heavy hitters in their first game.
If the sun devils or broncos are able to secure a win, it grants legitimacy to their conference that conventional sports media has been slowly taking away in favor of propping up the SEC and Big Ten. Wins by Boise State and Arizona State would serve to cement parity in college sports for longer, which is what most fans want. While these to teams carry a tremendously large burden compared to the rest of the field, fans of college football in general are behind them and will support them.
Georgia: Pain
In the SEC championship game, Georgia simply was unable to play better than they had in Austin during the regular season. The major perk for the bulldogs was their ground defense, who allowed only 31 rushing yards from the longhorns. The downside is, their offense wasn’t particularly productive through the whole game, and after major injury scares, Georgia needs an answer at quarterback.
It remains to be seen whether Carson Beck will even be able to throw a football by the time of Georgia’s quarterfinal. Gunner Stockton stepped in during the game and threw with more accuracy and total yards than Beck, but also threw an interception that Beck did not. In the kind of big games we’re about to see, every turnover is going to matter. Beck may still be able to take a snap one handed and hand the ball off, as he did in the game winning play against Texas, but that won’t be enough in the playoffs. Georgia earned the second seed, but at what cost?
Oregon: Poise
This Oregon team is no slouch, and has found a way to be successful in every facet of the game. The passing game under Dillon Gabriel is an attack that no defense has successfully been able to figure out, and the Ducks won’t see defensive wizardry that is likely to give them too much trouble unless Kirby Smart’s bulldogs find a way to meet them in the final. Oregon has played tough teams and come out on top every time this year. They’ve been in tough games. They know how to approach the task at hand in a way that works.
Oregon in big postseason games though is historically not great. The Ducks have two national championship appearances in the last two decades and lost both of them, first to the Cam Newton Auburn team, then again to Ohio State in the inaugural College Football Playoff when Cardale Jones and Ezekiel Elliot led the buckeyes to victory. Under Dan Lanning, the culture is different and Oregon should be cautiously confident and well prepared to make a deep run in the first ever 12 team playoff.
Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina: Acceptance
I said in the title of the piece that these are how the teams should feel right now, but that is not the path that these teams have chosen to take, if the twitter accounts of Gamecock Football, Alabama’s AD, and Lane Kiffin are anything to go by. Rather these schools have chosen to jump off the cliff of delusion; specifically, the argument that playing against good schools automatically means that you’re a better program and that you don’t have to perform against who you schedule. The formula for these teams to get to the playoff was very similar, don’t lose to Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Oklahoma, or each other. The committee established that winners earn their path to the playoff, while losers, especially sore losers, get left out.
My full reaction to the CFP bracket can be found here on the Cornfield Sports Pod:
