Nothing quite propel the passion and — allow ’s call this like it is — madness of your intermediate tailboard - loving , uvula - rupturing collegefootballfan quite like the prospect of atruenational sensation .
You lie with what we ’re speak about here . Bragging right . " We ’re No . 1 ! " The big froth exponent fingerbreadth . All that .
Crowning atruenational champion , in fact , is the singular reason behind the means that the summercater currently clean its champ , a method ingeniously call the College Football Playoff ( CFP ) . Well , that and making a million dollars , of course of study .
The money part , the College Football Playoff hasdown . As part of a reported $ 7.3 billion lot with ESPN that runs through 2026 , the major league that have contracts with the Rose , Cotton and Orange bowl game were expected to pull down nearly $ 60 million each in the 2017 football season alone . Five other conferences will cleave a pool of more than $ 80 million . ( school that are n’t in conferences , like Notre Dame , get theirs , too . )
The other part , crown atruenational champion on the field , unchallenged and completely without tilt ? Well , that ’s always been much trickier in college ball . Though , almost five full years after doing away with the Bowl Championship Series , things have gone remarkably swimmingly . So far .
The surgical words there : So far .
If there ’s one right-down when it follow tocollege football , its devotee and their team ' seasonal quests to be No . 1 , it ’s that letdown and outrage are always within battleground destination range .
How the College Football Playoff Works
The CFP is a four - squad playoff that determine the de facto national whizz . It took the sport a while to get to this item , from the sinister ages when polls of sports writer were the only ways to pick the champ , through various other degree ( the Bowl Coalition , the Bowl Alliance ) and , at last , into the oft - maligned , multiple poll parrot - driven , statistic - overload Bowl Championship Series ( BCS ) epoch , which start out in 1998 .
Talk about dashing hopes and indignation . The BCS , designed to pick the two best squad in the nation to represent for the patronage , was pockmarked by contention . Although , for all its disparager and trip , the BCS vex the final two teams veracious almost all the time and , in the death , place the framework for the CFP .
" I consider [ the CFP is ] ferment jolly well . I do n’t know that they ’ve picked the wrong teams , ever , in three year previous , " tell Berry Tramel , a longtime columnist and reporter forThe Oklahoman . " I wish it better than the BCS . "
The CFP , the brainstorm of a crowd of university administrators and television set executive , finally come into being after the 2014 season , with its first championship game played in January of 2015 between No . 4 Ohio State and No . 2 Oregon . The idea behind the playoff is — this is often the caseful , is n’t it ? — invitingly simple : pluck the four good college football game teams in the country , put them in two well - set up bowl games and have the winners play for a national championship trophy a calendar week later .
Selecting the team even seems straightforward enough . A dozen or soformer college players , current school day athletic competition directors and administrator , former coach ( and even journalists ! ) basket rummy minds and range the contending team ( all members of the Football Bowl Subdivision , formerly Division I - A , the top level of college football ) on a sort of factors , such as :
Therein , of row , lies the potentiality for outrage . No matter how many games are watched , no matter how many statistic are digested , no matter how many votes are taken by smart people ( and diary keeper ! ) , ranking teams is , in the ending , a issue of opinion .
It ’s subjective . Even theCFP hold it : " For purposes of any four - team playoff , the physical process will inevitably need to choose the four better teams from among several with lawful call to participate . "
Selecting the Top Teams
The natural selection committee first assembles a few weeks into the time of year for its first ranking , then meets every weekend until the end of the season . Just after the conference championship game , everybody descend on the four squad to play in the CFP . The commission seeds and direct the teams in the semifinals , and fills out the other major New Year ’s Day bowling ball games , too .
So far , so safe .
" Computers , I ’m not crazy about . Polls , I ’m not sick about . I think cause sharp masses to pose around and discuss it is the good elbow room , " Tramel say . " That ’s the style to come at a pretty full result no matter what you ’re doing , whether you ’re buying material demesne or vote in a college football playoff . "
As the 2021 - 2022 college football season entered its last weekend before the bowls , a weekend when league backup games are played and the final rankings are announced , these four teams were on top ( with win - loss records ):
Of of course , Alabama went on to pulsate Georgia in the SEC Championship , then pull ahead its means into its 6th appearance in seven year at the National Championship after a commanding 27 - 6 victory over No . 4 Cincinnati at the Cotton Bowl .
So where does that leave the No . 3 Bulldogs , which held the No . 1 office all time of year long until its 41 - 24 release to Alabama in the SEC Championship ? The University of Georgia Bulldogs are also bound for Indy after a 34 - 11 winnings over No . 2 Michigan in the Orange Bowl .
So does that mean the 2022 College Football National Championship will be a instant replay of the 2021 SEC Championship ? Not of necessity . Georgia has a big bone to clean with Alabama , not only because the Dawgs will be oppose for their first National Championship since 1980 ( Alabama won in 2020 ) , but also because these same two teams met here in 2018 for the National Championship — and Alabama beat Georgia 26 - 23 in overtime .
Talks of a six- or eight - squad playoff to appease the unhappy already have been raised . Whatever happens , though , this much is sure : People will ascertain , the bean counters will be express joy all the way to the bank and someone , somewhere will be upset . That ’s the game .
" It ’s football . masses just screw the game of football . It ’s tight - step . It ’s got hurrying and violence and all the thing that attract people to a variety of athletics , " say The Oklahoman ’s Tramel . " It ’s also partizan . It ’s easier to get behind a university than it is , say … pro franchises . Everybody loves theNFLand everything else . But you ca n’t always discover with them as much as you may , say , the University of Iowa . Or Arizona State University . Everybody can identify with a blank space .
" And it ’s got such tradition . It still does a honest job of merchandising — it ’s not inevitably dead on target — but they do a good task of selling itself as a bastion of raise up young men the correct way and that kind of thing . That ’s what appeals to people . "
