Quick bowl reaction: Bama in, FSU/ Georgia out

After they beat Georgia in the National Championship Game and Florida State’s offense looked so ragged against Louisville, it seemed inevitable that Alabama was going to be the final team into the College Football Play-Off.

They will play No.1 Michigan, while No.2 Washington and No.3 Texas face off in the other one.

Georgia fans could moan about not being one of the best teams in, but they sank themselves by back-to-back not-great performances against Georgia Tech and Alabama respectively. In the end, they ended up No.6 in the nation, and will face Florida State in the Orange Bowl – something we suspect won’t have a lot of weight if you consider the amount of players who won’t play.

But the bottom of all of this is that Florida State got absolutely shafted. Florida State went 13-0. They won their title. They did everything you could ask of a team, despite the fact that they were down to their third-string quarterback by the Louisville game. But despite the eliteness of the defense, the brutal offense not only against the Cardinals but also against hapless Florida the week before (with a back-up quarterback, who was injured in a decapitation attempt in The Swamp), killed them.

What was entirely stupid was that the Committee seemed to send Texas into a THIRD seed, Alabama FOURTH, and unbeaten FSU FIFTH, despite Alabama being 8th Nationally going in.

It led a lot of people to ask if the fix was in — or whether the prospect of leaving out a SEC team was something that the Committee felt it could not do. They even threw out words like: ‘Slave to the ratings’.

The ramifications are interesting. Florida State had already been looking at paying out for the Grant of Rights to leave the ACC, and this might have pushed their will even further (for the record their win in the ACC next year would have guaranteed them a play-off spot and perhaps a home draw, too!).

THE NEW YEAR’S SIX GAMES

Oregon already secured their spot after Friday Night’s loss to Washington, and they will play Liberty – the Group of 5 representative – in the Fiesta Bowl.

As for the SEC, Ole Miss and Missouri fanbases fought like cats and dogs about who should be ahead of each other — or if one should have been in at all. Penn State, Oklahoma, Liberty and Tulane were all vying for spots too.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Ole Miss will face Penn State in the Peach Bowl in Atlanta, while Missouri will have the dubious honor of playing Ohio State in the Citrus Bowl in the Cotton Bowl in JerryWorld.

In terms of interest, Ole Miss won’t face a worse offense than Penn State’s, and Missouri will face a Marvin Harrison Jr-less Ohio State.

ELSEWHERE IN THE SEC….

• LSU and Wisconsin will play each other in the ‘Destroyed Liver’/ Reliaquest Bowl in Tampa.
• Texas A&M will play a Big 12 rematch against Oklahoma State in the Texas Bowl.
• Iowa will play Tennessee in the Citrus Bowl. Tennessee fans will now learn what Big Ten fans have had to go through for some years……just how boring Iowa football is.
• Auburn will play Maryland in the Music City Bowl.

Of these, the most exciting seems to be the Texas A&M v Oklahoma State game, since both fanbases know each other, both hate the University of Texas and Oklahoma, and the fact that they’ve played each other 27 times previously.