Musings from Arledge: College Football Playoff Update

If you’re a USC fan who checked out for a bit—maybe tried to step off the college-football grid and take some time away after another heart-breaking season—and now you’re popping your head up and wondering what’s going on. Well, don’t. You don’t want to know. My advice is to go back to sleep for a couple of weeks and wake up when we’re a little deeper into the NFL playoffs. That will be better for your mental health. 

Getting up to speed now is a little like being Tom Hanks when he finally got off that island only to find that his wife had married the dentist. It’s not really the outcome you were hoping for.

But if you’re dead set on getting up to speed, fine. I’ll help you. 

First, you need to understand what we have here. The 12-team playoff is composed of five types of teams. You have the teams with giant payrolls, the Ducks, Buckeyes, and Longhorns—basically the Yankees, Dodgers, and Second Yankees of college football. 

You have the extra SEC teams, which you have to include just to keep the south from taking its ball and going home. The SEC thought half of its teams should make the playoff. (That’s because IT JUST MEANS MORE!) But other than Texas—more on them in a minute—the SEC isn’t that great this year. (Yes, it is! SEC! SEC!) Georgia can’t score. Alabama can’t score. USC can’t beat Maryland, as you know, but it can beat upper-half SEC teams.     

Then you have the champs from the ACC and Big 12, which aren’t very good but don’t have to be in those conferences. They’re like being the prettiest girl in South Bend. I don’t even know what that means. Whatever. Those conferences aren’t worth the time it would take to finish this paragraph properly.  

You have teams that have no business being there at all, like Indiana, Boise State, and SMU. These teams are in the playoff because the architects of the new system always wondered what the NCAA basketball tournament would be like if you shrunk it from 64 teams to 12 and also set aside spots for what would have been the 14-seeds. Now we know. 

And you have the Evil Empire itself, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, who played an embarrassing schedule with only a couple of actual road games and even lost to Northern Illinois in Rockne’s House. Yeah, I know, they’re also pretty good.  Doesn’t change the resume, though.

For those who have been longing for SMU’s return to national prominence for the last 40 years—I can see a couple hands in the back—you got your wish. Sadly, this SMU team didn’t have Eric Dickerson or Craig James, and they apparently didn’t replace those guys with anybody else of consequence. I will say this, though: it was the first full SMU game I’ve watched in four decades. 

Just kidding. I didn’t watch this one either. The first quarter was enough. 

You go to twelve teams you’re going to get some that just don’t belong. But the good thing about a twelve-team playoff is you have room for some experiments that you might not see with only four teams. This is where Texas comes in.  

Sark, who spent enough time with Lane Kiffin to develop a strong prejudice against young guys with famous last names, has elected to be the first coach in history not to start their Manning at quarterback. He has elected instead to try winning a title playing his second-best guy. This is a bold strategy, Cotton, and also a massive blow against privilege. Not to mention common sense. Or maybe it’s just a lark. Hard to say. I expected Sark to change course as we got deeper into dry January and those loopy ideas he cooked up late at a holiday party could be seen in the cold, hard light of the sober New Year. 

But no. He was committed. After handling quasi-blue blood Clemson in the opening round, Texas got Big 12 champ Arizona State in the second. The Sun Devils are coached by Kenny Dillingham, who is barely old enough to rent a car but is just the right age to be Oregon’s starting quarterback. When he gets older, he’ll probably drop “Kenny” and go with the big-boy version of his name. Or maybe not. It’s worked for Rogers and Loggins. And this Kenny seems to be doing a heck of a job. It doesn’t hurt that he has a mythical, folk hero at running back. 

Now, I need to prepare you for this. Most of the time we don’t think that college football teams should be built around short white guys who look like the guy who replaced our transmission last week. But at ASU, that’s exactly what they’ve done. And it’s worked! 

So how do I describe this? Well, Cam Skattebo is like a really short Paul Bunyan. He throws; he runs; he catches. He talks smack about how nobody can stop him. And they can’t, apparently. Skat will do as he wishes, and nobody—including Texas—can do anything about it. He’s a fantastic player and would be a fantastic player even if he wasn’t white and wasn’t named Skattebo. But let’s be honest, those two factors do help cement the legend, don’t they? 

Skattebo has had to overcome a great deal to become college football’s brightest star. He had to convince stadium security every week that he was actually a player on the team and not an extra from the cast of Jersey Shore trying to use his 15 minutes to get on the sidelines. He had to fight off Stanford’s protest against his eligibility after the Cardinal claimed they still had a monopoly on highly regarded white running backs (to be fair, it is a small and shrinking group). But he’s done it. He’s done it all. Skat has done everything he can do at this level and is prepared to mini Mike Alstott his way through the NFL next season. 

Sadly, Skat doesn’t play safety, so ASU gave the game to Texas by letting a receiver behind them on fourth and long at the end of regulation. J.R. Ewing wins again. And Coach Kenny, despite a valiant effort, only proved that he can find a way to lose a close game to a good team. Which probably makes him USC’s heir apparent.

In another quarterfinal, Notre Dame played Georgia—IT JUST MEANS MORE!—and physically beat up on a limited Georgia offense. It didn’t help that Georgia had its second-string quarterback. (I thought of it first!—Sark.) But I’ve seen Georgia’s first-string quarterback. He might not have helped anyway. Their O-line is a mess. Their receivers can’t catch. Even Kirby Smart is human, I guess. Or maybe, just maybe, the SEC loses some of its advantages when everybody else is paying players, too.  

Oh yeah, the SEC is out now. Texas lost to Ohio State. They played pretty well, but they turned 1^st and goal at the one at the very end of a one-score game into back-to-back disastrous plays and a 14-point loss. That part isn’t all that interesting. Ohio State is the interesting part. They lost two games this year and almost lost a few others. And everybody watching them in the playoffs has to wonder how that team, with all that talent, could play so poorly for much of the year. 

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?

The last time you saw Ohio State, they were losing to a Michigan team whose offense left when Jim left. Ryan Day’s job seemed in jeopardy, and nobody could figure out what was wrong with the Buckeyes. Then the playoff started. They treated Tennessee like Middle Tennessee State in the opening round, and then they played the Ducks in a glorious, beautiful, fantastic quarterfinal in the Granddaddy of Them All. 

Now let’s be clear that there are no good guys in that matchup. It makes me think of then-Senator Truman’s comment on a war between the Nazis and Soviets. This game was a horror show, Freddy v. Jason: College Football Edition. It was a game that cried out for a potent but containable cholera outbreak. No. Good. Guys. At all.

But that doesn’t mean that some bad guys aren’t worse than others. On one hand, you have traditional power Ohio State, a committed abuser of fake NIL to be sure, but also a program that has been great for a very long time. They didn’t buy their way to the top last week. They’ve been on or near the top for a long time. Their coach, Ryan Day, was born on third base, let’s concede that. Urban Meyer handed off a program that had literally everything you could possibly want as a college football coach: great tradition, great fanbase, great coaching staff, great roster, and the second-biggest war chest in college football. Everything except the ability to beat Michigan. The pressure on Ryan Day was immense. He needed a Buckeye win. 

And the rest of the world needed it, too.

Because on the other side you have the Oregon Ducks, the most important science experiment in college football history. If you took a mediocre institution in the middle of nowhere with no recruiting base, no history, no reason at all for being in a major conference, and you dropped unheard-of resources on their doorstep, what would happen? Is money alone enough? Can you buy class? Can you buy a national championship? (The quick answers: you could ruin college football with that cash, no, and not yet.)

Oregon is the epitome of everything that is wrong with college football today. A nothing program that took some of the world’s best marketers and set out to convince young people across America that they were cool even though they had nothing to offer? Check. A program that has pushed the limits of pay-for-play since Chip Kelly’s tenure so much that some SEC programs were offended? Check. 

Oregon is a program that jumped head first into the modern NIL/free agency lawlessness such that it hovers around the edges of other programs like a creep hanging around a school playground, holding giant bags of cash and trying to lure guys into their windowless van. Psst, recruit, do you like money? Come here for a second. 

It’s a program originally founded only on sizzle—facilities, uniform combinations and commercials—that is now a power solely because a single billionaire that looks like Dr. Frankenstein combined Jerry Buss and the Crypt Keeper has given the athletic department a blank check. Yes, Oregon is a problem. The Ducks winning a title would be the worst possible outcome of all. As Austin Powers once said, only two things scare me. A Ducks national title and carnies. As usual, Powers was right.

And can you imagine Dan Lanning’s interviews if the Ducks won a title? This is a guy who has been gifted the best roster in college football solely on the basis of unlimited funds, yet he has the nerve to act as if his coaching makes the difference. It’s like the skipper for the Yankees talking about how proud he is of his team for beating the Royals because it shows how they bought into his system. He’s the ultimate trust fund kid; Uncle Phil has bought him everything a boy could want, and he believes he deserves it all.  So he takes his loaded roster and—at least when he remembers to bring his fourth-down chart—beats teams that have a quarter of his payroll and then exudes the smarmy arrogance of that idiot younger son in Succession. No, Oregon winning would be intolerable. 

But imagine for a second that everything came crashing down on Oregon all at once in a single, glorious, karmic avalanche of pain. Imagine that Oregon had a half of football—in front of the whole world—that would make Job wince. Imagine how great that would be.

Now go watch the game, because it was every bit as wonderful as you’re thinking. For 30 minutes, Oregon was bullied, humiliated, backhanded, noogied, and generally treated like Joe Pesci in Casino, only with less mercy. Watching Oregon be pantsed on national television just when they thought they were finally going to win something was like a child seeing his first Christmas. It was like watching King Joffrey choke. It was like Charlie first walking into the chocolate factory. Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination! It was what we all wanted. It was what the world needed. It was glorious. 

Thank you, Ohio State. No, really, thank you.

Now I can go back to hating you guys.

Buckeye fans, true to form, are having some trouble navigating the larger world outside of Columbus. But as these groups of Buckeyes wander around outside the wrong stadium, confused and angry, I like to think there are even larger groups of Oregon fans stumbling around the same stadiums, convinced the even though they lost in a fashion only Oklahoma and Florida fans can relate to, they still showed up to a random college stadium the next week because they were convinced that Phil Knight’s money could buy anything, even a mulligan for their national humiliation. You mean we’re not playing this week?! Did the check not clear!?

And I like to believe those Duck fans keep running into the confused mobs of Ohio State fans who may not know where their team is playing but certainly know what they saw in the Rose Bowl and are eager to taunt the Duckies like that French soldier taunted King Arthur. “I unclog my nose in your direction, Duck fans.” Probably not, but it makes me happy to think that maybe it is.

So here we are, staring down what might be the worst possible national-title matchup that doesn’t involve Oregon. Get your air sickness bags ready, and let’s see how this nightmare ends. And I can’t help you with this one. There’s no right answer. Seeing the second-biggest payroll in college football win a title wouldn’t make me happy, especially after going to the ‘Shoe in 2009 and immersing myself in Buckeyes fan culture for a day. That’s a flock o’ fans that doesn’t deserve anything except pain—despite the necessary, ritualistic humiliation of Duckdom. Again, thank you.   

But what’s the alternative? It’s hard to watch the Irish have success. I mean, on one hand I feel like Marcus Freeman does a lot of things right, and he’s not nearly as off-putting as Charlie, Lou, and some of the rest of that crew were. Every once in a while I even feel my hatred start to soften—not melted! Don’t ever accuse me of that! But occasionally that big ball of anger that I have nursed since my earliest days as a USC fan softens just a little, just enough that you could push a spoon through it, like the ice cream when you finally get back from the grocery store. 

But then I see that leprechaun. I hear that fight song. I see the drunk Subway alums on the TV screen. And it all comes back to me. No, Notre Dame winning is very, very bad. I hate it. I’m not okay with it. There is a right answer.

Go Buckeyes!