2025-01-13 09:09

We are closing in to the end of the 2024 (/2025) college football season.
What will be interesting is, how the final polls will look like.
Because you might know or remember, the college football National Champion is based on the final rankings of several polls, most prominent the AP-poll of the press representatives and the coaches poll of the FBS coaches. Regarding those 2 major polls, they are done by quite few people, AP-poll is collected by a selection of 62 journalists of print and broadcasting and the coaches-poll is combined by 62 FBS coaches, so not even every coach of FBS level. They systems are the same for both polls, each member of the poll does bring in an individual list of TOP25 and the then the lists are combined by just adding up the positions.
Some polls are done by computer programs, which use many different algorithm to come up with a TOP25 or a complete list of ranks for all FBS.
Since the logics and in case of human opinions the perception is different for every participant, the polls might differ and they did differ in the end result, even at #1.
And if that happens, more than one team can claim to be National Champion of that season.
The whole system of the former BCS, the 4-team-playoffs and now the 12-team-playoffs is only the base for the coaches poll officially.
Of course does every poll take the results of the games played after regular season into the calculation, but that does not mean, that the winner of the National Champion game is crowed #1 in every poll.
In 2003 Oklahoma, USC and LSU had a tight race for #1, #2 and #3 in every poll. Since that was BCS era, the final BCS standing did determine the teams playing in the National Championship game. On the last regular season poll, AP- and coaches poll did put USC at #1, LSU at #2 and Oklahoma at #3, but BCS did put Oklahoma at #1 and LSU #2 with USC at #3.
So Oklahoma and LSU did battle it out in the National Championship game and USC did play #4 (in all polls) Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
LSU won and USC won, which did result in AP-Poll to name USC #1 and coaches poll LSU #1. A split National Championship.
That was the first one in BCS-era or beyond.
BCS started in 1998 with the goal to have a clear punch on the #1, to eliminate split national championships, which were common before that. 1990 had 4 different teams at #1, 2 for the 2 major polls and 2 different ones for other polls. Those 2 teams who got named #1 in the minor polls did not claim the title, still, a bit unfortune and the result is listed as unclaimed national title o their teams list in Wikipedia.
Before 2003 the limitation of the BCS became visible, it did not even unite the minor polls, which did name a different champ already in 2000.
The most severe break on the current era did happen in 2017, when UCF did play a perfect season, got only placed prior the bowls at #12 and by that not selected to play in the semis, won against higher ranked Auburn in the Peach Bowl and was then named #1 in the Colley poll, one of the many minor polls at the end of the season. UCF did claim the Championship with a lot of head shaking by all other FBS teams, but that’s how the system work. In that season did Alabama win the National Championship game and got all polls behind them, except Colley.
To be fair, since then, all National Champs were named by all polls the same, but now with the 12-team system, there is room for strangeness.
Granted, there is not much room. The Algorithms will likely grant plus points to the winners and minus points to the losers so the more ranked teams the final champ did beat, the better the team will get calculated.
More concerning are human polls, since here the perception and eventually personal affiliations might come into place.
I’m right now confident, that AP- and coaches-poll will be aligned on the #1, because with 50+ people, any affiliation is smoothed out and they will also respect the wins against ranked teams and the losers will get some malus. But I think at least this season we are save and we will get a unique National Champion.

Some other news came in during the week.

You might remember that the PAC-12, this season with only 2 teams in competition, did boost their team count for the 2026 season in total to 7 football playing teams, 1 short of the needed 8 teams. That is still intact.

The teams the PAC-12 did add came mostly from the Mountain West, which was in danger to lose so many teams, they might fall under the 8 teams minimum rule. They invite UTEP to join, to be at count of 8 for 2026, so all fine already.

The news was now, that Northern Illinois will leave the MAC on football in 2026 to join the MWC also as 9th football playing teams. The team will likely switch to a different conference for all other sports, so the MAC does lose NIU for good in all sports.

That does bring in the 1st crack in the lines of the so far very stable Mid-American. With the PAC-12 still looking for an 8th team, the realignment process is far from done.

Let's review the last set of bowls.

SEVENTH SET OF BOWLs

Thursday, January 9th
College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Capital One Orange Bowl (College Football Playoff Semifinal)
#5 Notre Dame vs #4 Penn State
I think that was a great game, even I did not pick the right winner.
Penn State had a better start (if you can call it that way, when the 1st points are scored in 2nd quarter) with a field goal after an Irish INT and a touchdown a drive later.
Notre Dame did get on the scoreboard before the half after a quick drive with a field goal when time expired.
But they scored a TD right after the break with the 1st drive to tie the game at 10.
Then came a lot of nothing again, until the 4th quarter started, which did bring a wild end.
Notre Dame did score to take the lead, Penn State did score to tie the game again at 17.
Notre Dame did throw and INT on the next play and Penn State scored a TD on the next drive to take the lead, only to have the Irish tying the game again on the drive afterwards.
So, all back and forth.
The time remaining did shrink and no team was able to separate themselves from the other.
Notre Dame did cross midfield again late in the game, but got stopped, punted and Penn State tried to get points on the board with 38 seconds left. And here Penn States QB did throw a fatal INT on a very bad decision throw under pressure and Notre Dame got in field goal range and did kick the ball for the National Championship ticket throw the uprights for a final score of 27:24.
Most astonishing in that game was, that the reliable Penn State QB did throw many INTs, but 2 of the 3 were taken back by penalties. I did see 2 of those INTs in the recap and both were bad throws, even one was taken back by penalties.
Of course that does at the end not cost you a game in total, but it is one of those major performances, which did help the opponent.
For Penn State, a disappointing result, they could have won the game with a bit more discipline, for Notre Dame a great accomplishment.
Jacks BOWL Score: 21-19

College Football Playoff Semifinal at the 89th Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic (College Football Playoff Semifinal)
#6 Ohio State vs #3 Texas
The 1st half was quite as expected, a close game, no team with a real advantage.
Only surprising was the 1st drive of the Buckeyes, which had 10 plays, went over 2/3 of the field and ended with a TD for the Buckeyes lead.
The Longhorns did counter late in the 2nd quarter after a long period of punt-drives with a TD to tie the game, but Ohio State needed only 1 big play (75-yard pass-TD) right after the return to take the lead back for the halftime break.
Then did the 2nd half start great for the Longhorns with an OSU INT, but they were unable to get points out of that, only a drive later did they score a TD to tie the game again.
Then, already in the 4th quarter, did Ohio State again have a long drive to take the lead and it followed the neck breaker right afterwards.
Longhorns down by 7 did get a drive going, was right before the Buckeyes endzone and the QB tried to make a play, got sacked and lost the ball. The ball was picked up and returned for the final score of 28:14.
Of course did Texas try to get back into the game afterwards, but with a bit more than 2 minutes to play against that defense was too much to pray for. That drive ended in an INT, which sealed the game officially.
Ohio State with a remarkable playoff run after that bad regular season ending and now close to win a National Championship.
I guess any discussion on the coaches job are for now over, regardless the result of the upcoming game.
Jacks BOWL Score: 22-19

There is only 1 game left, the National Championship game.
This season the 1st time quite deep in January, because of the 12-team playoff format and the resulting needed extra weeks for preparation and of course playing down the brackets to determine the participating teams.

The EIGHTH AND FINAL SET OF BOWLs on Monday 20th of January.

Monday, January 20th
College Football Playoff National Championship Presented by AT&T
#6 Ohio State vs #5 Notre Dame
@Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, Georgia
Played in the stadium of the Atlanta Falcons (and the SEC Championship game) this season.
This game is, even while the system did change from a 4-team-playoffs to a 12-team-playoffs system, the 11th playoff championship game.
I did skip again the year naming on the name of the bowl (it had 2025 in it), since at least it does confuse ME.
It's the Championship game for the 2024 season, but of course played in 2025.
Since starting the CFP-Series, the record of winning is (year is the season, not the date of contest) Ohio State (2014), Alabama (2015, 2017, 2020), Clemson (2016, 2018), LSU (2019), Georgia (2021, 2022) and Michigan (2023).
That makes at 10 games, 6 titles for the SEC, 2 for the BIG10 and 2 for the ACC.
Ohio State had 2 chances so far and won in 2014, lost in 2020, while Notre Dame was the last time in a championship game in 2012 in BCS era, where they lost.
One last info, before I dive into the game, according to the official seating numbers (the number before my matchup are the rankings of the final committee ranks) the game is between #8 and #7. I’m telling you this, since there were a lot of talks after the losses of the conference champs to change the seating and the format, but if you stick the committee rankings to find the participants, already this season no high ranked team would have survived, so the discussion is useless.
Now, to the game itself.
I think nobody had foreseen that matchup for 2 reasons.
The 1st is, Ohio State did look bad at the end of the regular season and the chance to get that deep was slim. On the other hand did they made a push in offseason to get a championship caliber and many did see them in the Championship game in preseason and were of course disappointed, when OSU did lose against Michigan.
The 2nd is, Notre Dame did suck against NIU and had a quite soft schedule, so seeing them winning in the playoffs against teams, which did play against some of the best teams in the country and won, was quite unreasonable. But here they are, both teams.
Funny is, Ohio State is heavily favored to win this game, despite the fact that Notre Dame did win against all those teams in the playoffs.
Vegas has them favored by 8.5 points, which is quite a lot.
I usually am very hard on Notre Dame, when they play against top teams, but this time, I think the Notre Dame defense is something very special and I expect a closer game.
Their offense is not as explosive as the Buckeyes offense can be, but as seen against the Texas defense, the Buckeyes offense can be controlled, even the Longhorns did not manage to control the teams for the whole game.
I’m not sure, which defense is actually better, the Notre Dame defense or the Ohio State defense, but I think Notre Dame has a very fine one.
That means, I think the key aspect in the game will be, whether the Notre Dame offense will be able to move the ball regularly or not.
They did move the ball quite well against Penn State, so likely they will have a chance to do the same against Ohio State.
But you never know.
Overall, I lean towards Ohio State, because they did show so much improvement on the past 3 games.
IF Notre Dame wins this, it will be a instant hint and ferry tale for the Irish fans, and it is plausible they will do this, but I have doubts they will the stamina to overcome THAT Buckeyes team.
Buckeyes win.

'Til next time
Jack6 on BLOCK OF GRANITE

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