Daily briefing: On Alabama vs. Ohio State, Hugh Freeze and the All-ACC team

Ivan Maisel’s “Daily Briefing” for On3:

Ohio State deserves to be ahead of Alabama

So Ohio State limps in at No. 5 and Alabama is at No. 6. This means the College Football Playoff Selection Committee took the long view of their respective seasons instead of a snapshot of how they finished. It also means the committee made Utah fans out of the entire state of Ohio. My first inclination is to recall how Nebraska made the BCS Championship Game after the season despite losing 62-36 to Colorado in its last regular-season game. Miami, on the short list of great teams over the past 25 years, led the Huskers 34-0 at halftime of the title game and won easily, 37-14. In the Buckeyes’ defense, they would have a month to get running backs TreVeyon Henderson and Miyan Williams healthy. But the Buckeyes deserve to be ahead of Alabama. The Tide (10-2) may be two plays away from 12-0, but if you include games against Texas, Texas A&M and Ole Miss, Alabama also is three plays away from 7-5.

Hate the sin, love the sinner

Auburn athletic director John Cohen knows exactly who he’s getting in Hugh Freeze. Of course he does. If nothing else, Cohen worked at Mississippi State while Freeze self-immolated at Ole Miss. But he did his due diligence on Freeze this fall. Cohen also wanted to have a coach in place and ready to dive into the transfer portal when it opens Monday, much less be in place for the early signing period that begins December 21. So Cohen held his breath – or perhaps his nose – and hired Freeze. Cohen knows his new constituency well enough to know that plenty of the Auburn faithful will hate the sin and love the sinner. And he knows that in Freeze he has a coach who is one of two coaches to beat Nick Saban’s Alabama in consecutive seasons (Les Miles is the other). It will be interesting to see how short a leash Freeze is given. At least he had the common sense to keep Cadillac Williams on his staff.

12 ACC schools have first-team all-league players

That’s an inkblot of an All-ACC team the conference announced Tuesday. Twelve of the 14 schools had a first-teamer, even as Clemson sophomore Will Shipley made the first team at three positions (running back, all-purpose, special teams). If you’re an optimist, you hear that and praise the league for the breadth of its talent. If you’re a pessimist, you look at the standings and see that No. 9 Clemson is the only team to reach 10 wins, then you surmise the reason that no team dominated the all-conference team is because there is no dominant team in the ACC. One more piece of news for the optimists: In a season that began as “The Year of the Quarterback” in the conference, redshirt freshman Drake Maye of North Carolina made the first team and sophomore Riley Leonard of Duke made honorable mention. The stars may have fizzled, but the young talent shined.