The programs meet again in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Eve, this time with a national championship game berth on the line.
Advertisement
Deshaun Watson and No. 1 Clemson will take on Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.
Also announced by the CFP selection committee was the Florida State Seminoles (10-2) going to the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl in Atlanta against Houston (12-1), the champion of the American Athletic Conference.
Clemson-Oklahoma is a rematch of last year’s Russell Athletic Bowl, when the Tigers throttled the Sooners 40-6.
The reordering by the committee means No. 1 Clemson plays No. 4 Oklahoma at the Orange Bowl, and No. 2 Alabama plays No. 3 Michigan State at the Cotton Bowl.
Michigan St.: Four-game bowl winning streak matches the longest in Big Ten history and is longest active streak in FBS….
Michigan State has one AP national championship to its credit, back in 1952. After years and years of handwringing over postseason disputes – some real, some created – does college football know what to do when all goes according to plan?
Louisville (7-5) will make its second bowl appearance in as many years as an ACC member and its sixth straight overall when it faces Texas A&M (8-4) in the FAM Music Bowl at Nashville at 7 p.m. on December 30. SEC champion Alabama opened its 2015 season with a victory over Wisconsin at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys. Michigan State (12-1) had a 22-play drive in the fourth quarter capped by a 1-yard touchdown run with less than a minute remaining to beat Iowa, 16-13.
Dantonio’s career record at Michigan State is 87-32. Current Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio was part of Saban’s staff as the defensive backs coach. “I do think it was a good experience for us because it was a combination of players used to going to bowl games
but we’d never really went to a bowl game that was a playoff game, and I’m not sure we managed that exactly the way we should have”, UA coach Nick Saban said.
At the very least, Michigan State and Alabama are stylistically similar. But it’s not surprising to me.
No team in the playoff stared down defeat as frequently as the Spartans, and no situation was as dire as the one MI faced at the Big House in mid-October. He’s one of the main reasons Clemson’s defense ranks seventh in the nation in total defense, as well as second in tackles for loss (108) and fifth in team sacks (38).
None of the other three teams in this year’s playoff made last year’s event. The Buckeyes may have been a long shot on paper – Stanford held the clear edge, comparatively speaking – but the selection committee doesn’t work on paper; it works on the fly, constantly and consistently rewriting the rules to justify each week’s newest batch of rankings.
Alabama and Michigan State have met only one previous time – a 49-7 beating by the Tide in the 2010 Capital One Bowl.
As good as Oklahoma’s offense has been playing over the last half of the 2015 season, I am of the school of thought that great defenses get the best of great offenses more often than the reverse.
Saban won a national championship at LSU in 2001, coached the NFL’s Miami Dolphins from 2005-2006 and won three national titles at Alabama – in 2009, 2011 and 2012.
The 2013 Florida States, the 2009 Alabamas, the 1995 Nebraskas, the winners that mow down everyone in their path, come along in college football somewhere between once every Olympiad and once every Halley’s Comet.
And how about a Fiesta Bowl pitting Notre Dame and Ohio State? Iowa and Ohio State didn’t win the Big Ten, so they were docked points for that.
Advertisement
The College Football Playoff selection committee, which needs a less unwieldy, rock-band name – let’s call it The Jeff Long Experiment – gave us the four teams we expected to see. Two-loss Stanford finished one spot ahead of one-loss Ohio State, the unanimous preseason No. 1 to start the year.
