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College Football Playoff: Alabama vs. Oklahoma; Clemson vs. Notre Dame
By Marc Tracy
ATLANTA — The Oklahoma Sooners (12-1) received the final slot in the four-team College Football Playoff on Sunday over primary contenders Ohio State (12-1) and Georgia (11-2), a move that sidestepped the most controversial possible decision in the playoff’s fifth season.
The other three teams chosen for the playoff are No. 1 Alabama (13-0), No. 2 Clemson (13-0) and No. 3 Notre Dame (12-0).
In the national semifinals, Clemson will play Notre Dame at the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Tex., and Alabama will play Oklahoma at the Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Fla. Those games are Dec. 29. The winners will play for the national championship on Jan. 7 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
Georgia was ranked fifth in the selection committee’s final rankings, while Ohio State was ranked sixth. Due to a separate contract, the Buckeyes will play the Pacific-12 champion, Washington, in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. It is likely that Georgia will face Texas (9-4) in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day.
The Sooners had been ranked fifth before Saturday’s games, just below the Bulldogs at fourth. Ohio State had been sixth. Georgia nearly toppled Alabama in the Southeastern Conference title game here, but the Crimson Tide, behind the starter-turned-backup quarterback Jalen Hurts, came from behind to win, 35-28. Meanwhile, Oklahoma decisively defeated Texas, which in October was the sole team to hand the Sooners a loss this season.
In an interview on ESPN shortly after the rankings were released, Rob Mullens, the Oregon athletic director who is the selection committee chairman, said that there was no consensus that any of Oklahoma, Georgia or Ohio State was “unequivocally” better than the other two. At that point, he said, the committee deferred to the protocol it is supposed to use to break ties, which includes conference championships. On Saturday, Oklahoma had won its conference championship, while Georgia had failed to.
“No one was unequivocally better than the other,” Mullens said, “so then we leaned on the protocol.”
Yet the ranking of Georgia above Ohio State — which, like Oklahoma, won its conference on Saturday — essentially indicated that the room did feel Georgia was unequivocally better than Ohio State, as the tiebreaker would have led Ohio State to be ranked higher.
Ohio State fans were able to claim a modicum of redemption, though. If the Buckeyes’ 49-20 loss to Purdue (6-6) in October was one of the two most consequential defeats of the season, the other was Georgia’s 36-16 loss at Louisiana State (9-3) in October. Louisiana State’s quarterback, Joe Burrow, who threw for 200 yards against Georgia, had transferred from Ohio State.
Several observers on social media and even on ESPN claimed that Las Vegas point-spreads are proof that Georgia, not Oklahoma, was the best of the three teams.
Mullens said there was “strong debate, even division in the room.”
Central Florida (12-0), the final undefeated team in the Football Bowl Subdivision, was apparently not considered for the playoff. U.C.F. was No. 8 in the committee’s last rankings and defeated Memphis, 56-41, to win its second straight American Athletic Conference title. The Knights have a 25-game winning streak and last year self-claimed a national title alongside the one Alabama won. But yet again the committee indicated that teams from the so-called Group of Five conferences are unlikely to receive serious playoff consideration.
From its official Twitter feed, Central Florida, which as the highest-ranked Group of Five champion will receive a spot in a prominent bowl (likely the Fiesta Bowl), suggested it might be able to find a way to claim a national title again.
In selecting the Sooners over the Bulldogs, the committee, and the playoff itself, avoided alienating at least one of its patrons. Had it chosen Georgia instead, the committee would have for the first time left three of the five major conferences — the Big 12, the Big Ten and the Pacific-12 — outside the playoff (Notre Dame is independent). And it would have further devalued the importance of conference titles, since it would have had to reject three major-conference champions in favor of the Bulldogs.
Alabama, as the top seed, has the right to home-field advantage, and indicated that it did not wish to play Oklahoma at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium, a few hours down Interstate-35 from its campus in Norman, according to ESPN, the network that broadcasts the playoff.
The Crimson Tide quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, a Heisman Trophy hopeful, is expected to be out with an ankle injury for roughly two weeks, Alabama Coach Nick Saban said on ESPN.
It is the third year that the Big 12 has been included in the playoff. It has been represented by Oklahoma all three times. And it is the second year in a row that the Big Ten has been excluded despite a strong champion in Ohio State.
The Pacific-12, which staged its championship game Friday night between two three-loss teams, was widely understood to have no shot at the playoff. It is the third year in five that the league is not represented.
It is Clemson’s fourth straight year in the playoff. And Alabama, the dominant dynasty of its era, has never missed it.
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