Sports
Ohio State or Notre Dame will be the deserving college football champions
Regardless of who wins Monday night's College Football Playoff championship game, be prepared for opponents to offer the following data points:
- But they lost to Northern Illinois! will be a popular refrain in the event of a Notre Dame victory, noting that no national champion has ever suffered such an embarrassing loss.
- Should Ohio State deliver coach Ryan Days' first national title, be prepared for a lot of whining and complaining about how it shortens the regular season that a two-loss team could win the national title after finishing fourth in the Big Ten.
Let's go ahead and provide a simple and straightforward preface to any attempt to diminish the first 12-team playoff champion: Stop this nonsense.
Both Ohio State and Notre Dame will not only be a worthy champion, but one that deserves special recognition for surviving a gauntlet of four intense, physical playoff games, something no team in the history of the sport has faced. had to make.
Earned? You better believe it.
Let's hope that at some point, after this playoff format has become embedded in the consciousness and no longer feels like anything new, this conversation goes away forever.
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Every other team sport has managed to crown its champion through a multi-round playoff, without arguing about what-ifs or whether the winner even deserved to be there. It's time for college football fans to get on board and make the sport's previously misguided ethos a thing of the past.
For decades, college football stood out because it valued the finesse of perfection rather than a series of tournament tests that revealed a team's true qualities.
Sure, college football has had plenty of champions who probably would have won in any format, whether it had been the poll era, the BCS or the four-team CFP. We can probably come to some consensus that no one beat LSU of 2019 or Miami of 2001 or Nebraska of 1995 because those teams were so much better than everyone else.
But there were also plenty of years, especially in the polling era and the BCS, when the sport's tendency to portray itself as a beauty pageant perhaps wrongly identified the best. And most deserving team.
In 1984, BYU opened the season with a rousing win over Pittsburgh to climb the rankings, spent the rest of the season beating a bunch of mediocre to bad teams in the Western Athletic Conference, and almost reached No. 1 by default when all others lost games and captured the national championship by beating Michigan 6-6 in the Holiday Bowl.
That's how the sport used to be.
But even in the BCS era, there were questionable calls.
Who's to say that Auburn wasn't actually the best team in 2004 when it made it through the SEC, but was squeezed out of the championship game because Southern Cal and Oklahoma were also undefeated? How do we know that Oklahoma State wouldn't have beaten LSU or Alabama in 2011 if it had been given a chance instead of the BCS settling for an all-SEC rematch?
Even more frustrating, sports agents looked at those controversies year after year and instead of conceding that there was a better way to run the postseason, essentially argued that a media food fight over identifying the best team was driving interest in college football sparked.
Just think: If we still had the BCS, this year's national championship game would have been Oregon vs. Georgia, and the winner would have been accepted as the season's legitimate champion.
But because we actually saw games take place on the field, we know these weren't the two best teams. Georgia not only lost to Notre Dame, it was physically battered. And although Oregon defeated Ohio State at home early in the season, the Ducks appeared to be out of the game Buckeyes competition when they played on a neutral field with everything on the line.
If you're one of those tradition-minded fans who believe Oregon's earlier win over Ohio State and subsequent Big Ten title should have been the final word because that's how it's worked for so many years, then I understand.
But it's a misguided mindset, rooted in the idea of a championship as a reward rather than the culmination of a process that tests every facet of a team.
Think of what Ohio State had to go through in the CFP alone, facing the nation's No. 3 defense (Texas), the No. 6 defense (Tennessee) and an offense that averaged 35 points per game ( Oregon).
Notre Dame has faced the No. 2 scoring offense (Indiana), the SEC champion (Georgia) and the No. 7 defense (Penn State).
Do these teams have some shortcomings? Naturally.
No national championship team has ever lost to an opponent as bad as Northern Illinois, which finished 4-4 in the Mid-American Conference. It was a stunning, inexcusable performance by Notre Dame, but also the catalyst to fix the problems and become a group that played with intensity, focus and purpose.
And it's true that Ohio State, having lost to Michigan for the fourth straight year, wouldn't have been discussed at all in the four-team BCS or CFP. They would have simply been assigned to a bowl game that no one cared about, and it would have been a sad and disjointed ending for a team that never lived up to its potential.
But when you see Ohio State play in this tournament, with two wins over good opponents and a tough win over Texas, it doesn't seem like a good advertisement for the old system.
We are very grateful. “I think everyone in the program is in this situation for a lot of reasons,” Day said. But I do think the new format has allowed our team to grow and build throughout the season, and as much as losses hurt, they really allow us as coaches and players to look closely at the issues and address them. to take. on how to fix them over time. I think that's really the most important thing I've learned about this format, which I think has been great for our players. I think it's great for college football.
And no one has to apologize for that.
Likewise, the Miami Heat didn't have to apologize for making the NBA Finals two years ago after losing their first game of the play-in tournament and getting another chance to win the eighth seed.
Likewise, UConn didn't have to apologize for winning the 2014 men's basketball championship despite finishing third in the American Athletic Conference and entering the NCAA Tournament as an afterthought No. 7 seed.
Likewise, the 2011 New York Giants didn't need to apologize for being a 9-7 regular season team that happened to win a Super Bowl and beat one of the greatest New England Patriots teams of all time in the process.
This is how sports work. Get used to it. Take your complaints elsewhere.
And the idea that it shortens the regular college football season because the last two remaining teams wouldn't be the ones picked by a committee or pollsters? There's just no evidence for it.
After all, every team that makes the playoffs got there by winning a conference or being rated as a top-10 team. That's the norm now in the 12-team playoffs, and getting there isn't easy.
Alabama couldn't do it, despite being given every benefit of the doubt. Ole Miss couldn't do it despite having arguably the best overall roster in the SEC. Miami couldn't do it despite having the best offense in college football and going 10-2 in a power conference. If the regular season had been meaningless, there wouldn't have been so much shouting from that trio that they barely missed the cut.
Now, to win a national championship in college football, you have to be one of the best teams in the country during the regular season And play your best football in december And stay healthy enough to win four postseason games And facing teams with a variety of styles and strengths.
There are no free rides. You must be complete.
Ohio State and Notre Dame have done that better than anyone, and Monday night's winner will be the most deserving national champion the sport has ever had.
Follow USA TODAY Sports Columnist Dan Wolken on social media @DanClouds
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