Pitt, Group of Five teams on rise
In the end, everything came together for the College Football Playoff.
There’s the established juggernaut in Alabama. The Crimson Tide are chasing a second straight national championship and a seventh under coach Nick Saban.
There’s the second SEC powerhouse chasing its first title in more than 40 years.
Seen as nearly unstoppable before being cut down to size in the conference championship game, Georgia will have more than three weeks to rediscover its lost mojo.
In Michigan, one of the blueblood programs in the sport is getting its first crack at the playoff. The Wolverines will take on the Bulldogs in an Orange Bowl matchup set to be decided in the trenches.
And there’s a Cinderella story in Cincinnati, which finished the regular season as the only unbeaten team in the Football Bowl Subdivision and is the first from the Group of Five to finish in the top four.
Here are the winners and losers from the final playoff rankings:
Winners
The selection committee: For at least the fourth year in a row, the committee was gifted a controversy-free semifinal field.
That seemed unlikely in the wake of Oklahoma State’s loss to Baylor in the Big 12 championship game, which opened up a spot in the playoff with several conferences still to be decided. But the rest of Saturday went according to script: Alabama beat Georgia, Cincinnati beat Houston and Michigan beat Iowa to hand the committee an easy top four without any debate or outrage.
Pittsburgh: The matchup against Michigan State in the Peach Bowl is a good one for the Panthers, who can put up Kenny Pickett and wide receiver Jordan Addison against a pass defense that ranked last nationally in yards allowed per game and in the bottom 20 in completion percentage and touchdowns allowed.
While the Spartans are a more respectable 64th in the country in yards given up per pass, Pittsburgh’s high-volume passing game will pose problems for an underperforming secondary.
The game is also a reunion for Pittsburgh coach Pat Narduzzi, who was previously the very successful defensive coordinator under former MSU coach Mark Dantonio.
Group of Five: The five Group of Five teams in the final rankings is one fewer than a year ago but ties 2019 for the most in any non-pandemic year in playoff history. In addition to Cincinnati’s historic playoff bid, the Group of Five has No. 13 Brigham Young, No. 20 Houston, No. 23 Louisiana and No. 24 San Diego State. A sixth team, 12-1 Texas-san Antonio, had a very good case for coming in at No. 25 but was bumped out by 8-4 Texas A&M.
Losers
Baylor: Seeding after the top four doesn’t matter for Power Five champions, who are locked into New Year’s Six play regardless of the pecking order in the final playoff rankings.
Still, that Baylor landed at No. 7 is a not-so-subtle sign of disrespect for a team that won the Big 12, had three wins against opponents in the final rankings and avenged one of its two losses by topping Oklahoma State. Baylor had more wins than No. 6 Ohio State, as many wins as No. 5 Notre Dame and a Power Five crown to boot.
Notre Dame: How close were the Irish to reaching the semifinals under new coach Marcus Freeman?
Notre Dame was in with an Alabama loss to Georgia. In with an Iowa win against Michigan. In had Cincinnati lost
to Houston. Getting at least one of those – especially with Georgia such a favorite in the SEC – seemed very possible after the Big 12 championship game. Instead, Freeman’s debut will come against Oklahoma State in the Fiesta Bowl.
Brigham Young: BYU was dropped one spot to No. 13 in the final playoff rankings, as the committee leapfrogged two Power Five champions – Utah and Pittsburgh – past the Cougars, who were idle after finishing the regular season in late November with a win against Southern California.
The deck was always stacked against BYU claiming an at-large bid to the New Year’s Six.
Still, the Cougars went 10-2 with losses to Baylor and Boise State, went 5-0 against the Pac-12 and beat the eventual champions of the Pac-12 (Utah) and Mountain West (Utah State).