Oklahoma the playoff is in over Georgia and Ohio State, moving into the final semifinal spot after a Big 12 title game victory.

The A’s top choice in this year’s Major League Baseball draft has a chance to win a college football national championship.

Kyler Murray and Oklahoma (12-1) are going to the College Football Playoff over SEC runner-up Georgia (11-2) and Big Ten champion Ohio State (12-1) after the selection committee played it safe and fell back on some simple criteria: One loss is better than two. Winning a conference championship is better than not. Go with the team that avoided getting blown out (the Buckeyes’ loss was a 49-20 rout at Purdue).

The Sooners also defeated the team that beat them in the regular season when they topped Texas in the Big 12 championship game Saturday.

“I feel like we have a team worthy of it, a team that can go make a run,” Sooners coach Lincoln Riley said on ESPN.

Oklahoma will face No. 1 Alabama (13-0) in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 29 in a matchup of Heisman Trophy front-runner quarterbacks — Murray and the Tide’s Tua Tagovailoa, who sprained his ankle in the SEC championship game Saturday.

No. 2 Clemson (13-0) plays No. 3 Notre Dame (12-0) in the Cotton Bowl on the same day. The winners meet in the championship game Jan. 7 at Levi’s Stadium. Snyder retires: Bill Snyder already was considered the architect of the greatest turnaround in college football history before he decided to return from a three-year retirement in 2009 to resurrect Kansas State again. Now, the 79-year-old coach is heading back into retirement.

Snyder decided to step away after 27 seasons on the sideline, ending a Hall of Fame tenure in Manhattan, Kan., that began in 1988 when the Wildcats were in the midst of a 27-game winless streak. It ends with a record of 215-117-1, trips to 19 bowl games, two Big 12 championships and a successful battle against throat cancer. Briefly: Saturday’s SEC championship thriller between Alabama and Georgia on CBS drew the highest television rating for a regular-season college football game in seven years, a 10.52 rating. That’s the best rating for any non-bowl game since LSU and Alabama played a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in November 2011 and earned an 11.8 rating . ... Akron fired coach Terry Bowden after seven seasons (35-42, 4-8 this season). Bowden led Auburn to an 11-0 season in 1993.