Sooners snag 4th spot in playoff semis
Faced with a tricky choice, the College Football Playoff selection committee 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 didn’t get blown out.
Oklahoma is in the playoff over Georgia, moving into the fourth and final spot Sunday after the Sooners avenged their only loss by winning the Big 12 championship against Texas.
“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.
The Sooners (12-1) will face No. 1 Alabama (13- 0) in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 29 in a matchup of Heisman Trophy front-runner quarterbacks — Kyler Murray of Oklahoma and the Tide’s Tua Tagovailoa, who sprained his ankle in the Southeastern Conference championship game Saturday and is expected to miss at least two weeks.
No. 2 Clemson (13- 0) plays No. 3 Notre Dame (12-0) in the Cotton Bowl on the same day. The win-
ners meet in the championship game on Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, California.
The rest of the NewYear’s Six bowl matchups are UCF vs. LSU in the Fiesta Bowl; Florida vs. Michigan in the Peach Bowl; Ohio State vs. Washington in the Rose Bowl; and Texas vs. Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
Georgia (11-2) dropped a spot to fifth and Ohio State (12-1) remained sixth in the selection committee’s final top 25 released Sunday. The Bulldogs lost to Alabama in the Southeastern Conference championship game Saturday while the Buckeyes won the Big Ten championship against Northwestern.
“In the end, one-loss conference champion with their
only loss being on a neutral field toa ranked team, which they avenged in their conference championship,” selection committee chairman Rob Mullens said on ESPN. “Every combination was vetted, looking at their full body of work, their resumes sideby-side. In the end, what we decided was amongst the group of three, Oklahoma, Georgia, Ohio State, the committee voted that no one was unequivocally better than the other so then we leaned on the protocol. So we went with the one-loss conference champion.”
Selection committee protocol states conference championships work as a virtual tiebreaker when teams are close. The Sooners beat Texas for the Big 12 title on Saturday, paying back a three-point loss in October in Dallas in the Red River Rivalry game.