The College Football Playoff management committee just had another one of those meetings in a Dallas-Fort Worth airport room the great Heather Dinich of ESPN describes as “windowless” when an autumnal meadow in Vermont might help. The august group aims to decide when to expand from four to 12 teams.
Oregon won, but the Pac-12 lost another shot at the College Football Playoff
If only it could expand by, say, Wednesday.
The annual shedding of the American West for the playoff has intensified again, and it’s a thrilling bummer again, with the games often thrilling and the upshot always a bummer. The teams of the Pacific-12 are well into their annual rite of elbowing each other out of the national picture, robbing the playoff and the nation of verve and variety and the kinds of banal inter-regional discussions that improve life in America. This has gone on for so long now that we should have an annual goodbye-West festival with health-abetting foods such as kale and açaí.
Oregon just took UCLA’s spotless record (6-0) and left a big spot (6-1) by 45-30 on Saturday, one week after Utah took Southern California’s shiny record (6-0) and left a crummy little dent (6-1) by 43-42. Now those of us long craving playoff participation by the most gorgeous American region have begun our annual sigh at Pac-12 standings that look so familiar: three teams with one loss (Oregon, USC, UCLA), three with two losses (Utah, Washington and Oregon State), plenty of games left to supply more losses, and October still here.
Parity is so egalitarian, and so desirable, and so, damn.
Here’s a sentence growing old: There hasn’t been a team from west of Oklahoma City in the playoff since 2016. That’s not to mention there hasn’t been one in six of the eight playoffs so far, or that 13 of the 16 entries in the eight playoff-era national championship games have resided in the American Southeast, or that it’s also 13 of the last 14, or that the only exception in the past seven seasons was a 7-0 Ohio State team in dreadful 2020, the pandemic-shortened season everyone just yearned to finish.
That’s not to mention that no two-loss team has made the playoff.
Sometimes there’s hope, as with Utah in 2019, when the Utes carted an 11-1 record into December before the very thought of it looked heavy in a 37-15 loss to Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game. Sometimes, the hope starts for the exits by November. Always, there’s absence. Usually, there’s some game that just makes you mad, as it might end up with Utah losing 29-26 at Florida this year, or as with Oregon losing in November 2019 by 31-28 at Arizona State.
That’s when one Jayden Daniels completed 22 of 32 passes for 408 yards and three touchdowns for the Sun Devils, the same Jayden Daniels who just went 21-for-28 and rushed 23 times for 121 yards as LSU reached 6-2 by pounding No. 7 Ole Miss 45-20 and reminding again that Brian Kelly is one magnificent football coach.
The other renowned Kelly, UCLA’s Chip, sat at a forlorn little interview table in Eugene, Ore., where he used to work, and gamely spoke of the 545 total yards on the other side. “I thought we practiced really well all week, and I thought our defense has been really good all year,” he told reporters before saying, “Sometimes, you’ve got to give credit to the other team.”
He also said, “I had not seen Bo Nix in person,” and then he said it had been impressive to see the Oregon quarterback who used to the Auburn quarterback and whose Dad also used to be the Auburn quarterback, all of which would make it hard for a certain fan base if Nix were to steer Oregon into the playoff after skedaddling from Auburn after three seasons.
Luckily for Auburn fans, who may have had enough displeasure, that doesn’t happen in our West-less playoff ritual. At least Nix is something to see, as were these numbers: 22 of 28 for 283 with five touchdown passes and zero interceptions, 107 rushing yards for Bucky Irving, eight catches for 132 yards and two touchdowns for Troy Franklin, and whatever the astronomical decibels of the great Autzen Stadium, one of the country’s great noise harbors.
“I think it’s just scheme, it’s just the players around me,” Nix told reporters. “I think we’ve done such a good job of just running the play that’s called. To be honest, out there, when I’m doing it, it feels like I’m not doing a whole lot, because I don’t have to. I’ve just got to get the ball to the playmakers around me. Coach (Kenny) Dillingham (the offensive coordinator) has constantly put us in really good situations. We’re really comfortable with the plays we call. I always feel like we’ve got plays called at the right time.”
So maybe the weary eyes, while aware USC and UCLA must play each other (on Nov. 19), can follow the mighty Ducks as they welcome Utah and Washington in November, among other tasks. Their playoff bid would contain one big groan. It would be for the committee members and a nation of would-be committee members to discern what to do with the 49-3 annihilation with which Oregon began the season.
That was in Atlanta against Georgia, which is ranked No. 1 and figuring to relocate neither from the American Southeast nor from prominence.
Those same two realities go for Clemson, even if for a good while on Saturday it appeared that in yearning for a rise from the West, some of us might have overlooked another region having a big football autumn on Sundays and Saturdays: Upstate New York. Syracuse gave Clemson another one of those puzzles Syracuse seems to give Clemson, leading 21-7 before Clemson’s defense put on the clamps, and Syracuse went to 6-1 while Clemson to 8-0 after a 27-21 Tigers win, and Syracuse Coach Dino Babers said, “That defense is a big-time defense,” and Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney raved about Babers and staff.
It also left Clemson 38-0 in its last 38 home games and 57-1 in its 58 in the playoff era, which is precisely how one qualifies for playoffs in the four-team era. The four-team era doesn’t reward much rebellion against the titans. It doesn’t fancy frees-for-all. What a bonanza that 12 teams someday will expand both revenue and forgiveness.
Source: WP
