And then there were four – the college football playoffs

We are finally back to what used to be the start of the college football playoffs. Four teams will play to see who gets the coveted honor of national champion. For the last decade the playoffs had only four teams, picked by a committee of knowledgeable football minds.There was, to be sure, some grumbling about which teams were selected. This happened every year and many screamed for more teams to have a chance. I suggested many years ago that selecting the best (however many teams) would be impossible because the process is subjective. Go to eight teams and a ninth deserving team would be left out. Go to 12 and there would surely be a 13th that felt they were better than somebody else that made it in.I was a bit surprised when it was determined that the playoff field would expand from four teams to 12 for 2024 and that is exactly what happened. But did it stop the whining? Of course not. Folks from Alabama and Old Miss as well as pundits and fans from across the country felt cheated. I suppose I could say I told you so.Other complaints involving seeding and automatic berths surfaced as well. I think the 12-team format will survive. As for some of the rules, changes will be made and likely by next year.For now let's look at what we have. Is it better than letting reporters pick the national champion? The UPI and AP champion were not always the same team. This is better. Is today's system more fair than the computerized BCS that was used until 2015? You bet. Will the whining cease once some tweaks are made? Of course not!But here we are. Four teams are left to play for the title and the games may or may not (based on what we have seen thus far) be great contested matches that we all will love watching. Time will tell.For 2024 the rules were pretty simple: 1) The five highest ranked (nobody ever complains about the rankings, right?) conference champions would get automatic berths. 2) The next highest ranked teams would get the remaining seven spots. 3) The four highest ranked conference champions would be seeded 1-4 and get first round byes. 4)The next four highest ranked teams would host first round games.Simple enough. Fair? Not necessarily. Most coaches want the bye. One less game to play to obtain the ultimate goal. But due to rule #3 the BEST four teams may not get the top four seeds. Here is another thought: should any team get a home game if you are trying to give all 12 teams a fair shot?Let's see how things have played out thus far. The home team won all four of the first round games. None were close. Notre Dame beat Indiana 27-17. The score in that game was 27-3 with a couple of minutes to go. Two late Hoosier scores made it closer than it actually was, and many people were complaining that Indiana didn't belong.Texas beat Clemson 38-24, Ohio State defeated Tennessee 42-17 and Penn State handled SMU 38-10. Another imposter folks howled about the Mustangs. Most of that criticism came from SEC people.So the last three days brought us the quarterfinals. Seeds 5-8 got to play the top seeded teams at neutral sites. Guess what happened? All four top seeds were knocked off and except for Texas double overtime 39-31 win over Arizona State, none of those were particularly close games.Can we take anything out of the quarterfinal games? One could say that the time off was not beneficial to the top seeded teams as they were out of their normal rhythm. I'm not sure I would go that far, but they all DID lose. Can a team actually decline a top seed? Would a coach dare do that? Not likely.Other random thoughts. Ohio State looks unbeatable, though I would say that doesn't mean anything. Penn State has opened up its offense and looks good as well. Notre Dame seems like a solid team. Texas should not be overlooked.There is no way however, that these four teams would have been selected if we were using the old system. That is the beauty of having an expanded playoff and I'm looking forward to watching the semifinals and championship games.Until then let's give a shout out to the most outstanding performance by a player thus far. For me it's Arizona State's Cam Skattebo. The running back ran for two scores, threw a touchdown pass, caught a long pass on a wheel route that set up a score and ran for a two point conversion.He did all this while being physically ill as he spent part of his evening tossing his cookies on the sideline. That's impressive… well, maybe not the sideline stuff.One more thought. When the four-team playoff began the championship was played in January of 2015. Do you remember what schools played in that game, who won and what the final score was? If you are a Buckeye fan, you just might.Ohio State defeated Oregon 42-20… a score eerily similar to this week's game!