The Spartans, who were No. 2 early in the season, edge up after beating Iowa 16-13 in the Big Ten championship game.
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The other semifinal matches No. 2 Alabama and No. 3 Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl at 7 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.
Clemson (13-0) has been No. 1 since the committee began its rankings the first week of November, and committee chairman Jeff Long said that the Tigers were the clear top team in the final rankings. The 80th playing of the Cotton Bowl will follow an afternoon matchup between top-seeded Clemson and fourth-seeded Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. It’s a rematch of last season’s Russell Athletic Bowl, a 40-6 romp for the Tigers that served as a springboard of sorts on the way for Dabo Swinney’s team to be the last unbeaten club at the FBS level this season. Michigan State handed Iowa its first loss in the Big Ten title game to move into the playoffs, while Oklahoma had already completed its season and held on for the final playoff spot.
Because the committee had released preliminary rankings each Tuesday for the past several weeks, expectations for the final four were in place, and Saturday’s results – the favoured team won in all four of the major conference championship games – all but ended the mystery of which four teams would qualify Sunday.
Ninth-year head coach Mark Dantonio couldn’t help but pay homage to those who helped make possible: MSU’s third Big Ten title on his watch, its first appearance in the College Football Playoff, and a realistic shot at capturing the program’s first national championship in 49 years.
As expected, the College Football Playoff will feature the four conference champions for the second consecutive year. But then the national rankings came out in August, and the old Clemson suspicion was evident – the Tigers were No. 12 in both polls, two spots behind nemesis Florida State in the AP poll and four sports in arrears to the Seminoles in the USA Today rankings. They’ve got more NFL-bound players than the Spartans.
The co-Big Ten champion Spartans lost out on a tiebreaker and didn’t get to go to the Rose Bowl in 2011. “Didn’t really have the number of scholarships until the past year we were there….”
Clemson was “clear-cut” No. 1: A week ago, Long said there was significant debate over whether Clemson or Alabama would be No. 1.
And how about a Fiesta Bowl pitting Notre Dame and Ohio State?
Two Heisman candidate quarterbacks in Deshaun Watson and Baker Mayfield. The play was dubbed Michigan State’s Miracle, but in some ways it symbolized the Spartans’ greatest traits.
Michigan State has been one of the most resilient teams of the 2015 season.
Alabama got 189 yards from Derrick Henry on a staggering 44 carries against Florida’s stingy defense Saturday to win the SEC title game 29-15. USC fell five spots after taking its fifth loss, a 41-22 defeat against No. 6 Stanford at the Pac-12 Championship Game.
But Michigan State plays a traditional power-based game, and that’s nearly never how you beat Alabama, which plays the power-based game with faster, bigger, stronger people across the field. Oklahoma won regular-season games in 1963 and 1972; Clemson won bowl matchups in 1989 and then again last season. Alexander, a prospective pro who is considered Clemson’s “lockdown corner”, limited Shepard to one catch for 13 yards in last year’s bowl game.
Iowa came up just short of the playoff, but its first trip to Pasadena sine the 1990 season is a pretty good consolation. It just proves that this team, no matter how bad things look, we’re going to keep fighting, we’re going to keep pushing and we’re going to scratch our way to a victory.
The next time someone howls about the need for an eight-team playoff, remember this season. The Gators have 11 defensive starters destined for the National Football League draft, and they’ve got more overall speed than MI.
“This is more than one year”.
This time it’s one of the best teams in Bob Stoops’ 17-year career at Norman.
Ultimately it appeared that the lack of a conference championship game hurt the Big 12 in 2014.
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Ohio State, Notre Dame, Florida State and North Carolina round out the top 10.
