Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State make College Football Playoff
Alabama is the top seed for the College Football Playoff and the Big 12 is completely shut out of the four-team field.
The Crimson Tide held on to the top seed from the previous week's rankings thanks to a win in the SEC Championship Game against Missouri. Oregon stayed at second after blowing out Arizona on Friday in the Pac-12 Championship Game.
Florida State stayed in the top four after beating Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship Game.
Because of the wins by those three teams, their inclusion into the top four seemed like a no-brainer. The biggest debate was for the fourth spot, which was determined among TCU, Ohio State and Baylor. And the Buckeyes, after beating Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship Game on Saturday night, slipped into the fourth spot from No. 5 the previous week, meaning TCU and Baylor, the co-champions of the Big 12, were left out of the playoff.
"I think with the championship game, Ohio State demonstrated they were a total team," committee chairman Jeff Long said. "And they did overcome replacing two quarterbacks, and that's a tremendous statement about the quality of their team. And with the conference championship in the Big Ten, with the win over the Western Division champ Wisconsin, it was decisive for Ohio State to move into that fourth spot."
After losing J.T. Barrett to injury against Michigan last week, Cardale Jones, the Buckeyes' preseason third-string quarterback, started the game against Wisconsin.
TCU was ranked No. 3 entering the weekend ahead of No. 6 Baylor, likely because Long said the panel hadn't looked at the 61-58 head-to-head win yet by the Bears over the Horned Frogs on October 11. The filibuster against the game was likely because Baylor hadn't played Kansas State, a strong opponent that TCU beat 41-20 on November 8.
On Saturday, the Bears beat Kansas State 38-27, equaling the conference schedules of the two teams after TCU's 41-20 win over KSU on November 8. And not only did TCU end up falling below Baylor when the game between the two was brought into the equation, the Horned Frogs fell below Ohio State despite beating Iowa State 55-3 on Saturday.
"TCU, I think once we saw the body of work, it was really about Ohio State's movement up," Long said. "It was Ohio State's impression, their perfomance on the field, that made a difference to the committee to move them up. So it was really about Ohio State and not about TCU."
Why was it about Ohio State? While Long said the committee didn't deal in hypotheticals, he said Ohio State's extra game via the Big Ten Championship Game made a huge difference. Since the Big 12 doesn't have a championship game, both TCU, at No. 6 in the final rankings, and Baylor, at No. 5, only played 12 games before the final standings.
The Big 12 presented the two as co-champions to the committee.
"We really don't deal in hypotheticals, so they don't have that game, but, again, I'll go back and say that Ohio State's performance in a 13th game gave them a quality win against a highly-ranked team that allowed them to move into that fourth spot," Long said.
The Buckeyes, as the No. 4 seed, will play Alabama in the Sugar Bowl on January 1. Oregon will play Florida State in the Rose Bowl in the other semifinal on January 1. It's the Seminoles' second-consecutive trip out to Pasadena, Calif., as the Rose Bowl is where FSU beat Auburn for the final BCS title in January.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!