The Spartans have won seven of their past eight games against top 10 teams, knocking off two previously unbeaten top five teams the past three weeks: Iowa on Saturday night in the Big Ten title game, and on November 21 MSU beat the same Ohio State program that eliminated the Tide from last year’s CFP.
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Top-seeded Clemson will play No. 4 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl in the first College Football Playoff semifinal on New Year’s Eve.
With Clemson’s selection, the ACC has placed a team in the four-team College Football Playoff in each of its first two years of existence.
Still, the committee had to be relieved that its main decision this year was where to seed Michigan State and Oklahoma.
The Tigers and Sooners both have quarterbacks worthy of Heisman Trophy consideration, and the teams know each other well after facing off in last season’s Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando. Henry has carried at least 38 times in three of Alabama’s last five games, and because Michigan State should be able to pressure Tide quarterback Jake Coker, it’s likely Henry will have to carry the load again in the Cotton Bowl.
Clemson’s Deshaun Watson (4) celebrates his touchdown against North Carolina during the first half of the Atlantic Coast Conference championship NCAA college football game in Charlotte, N.C., Saturday, Dec. 5, 2015.
Michigan State has won its four bowl games since, including last New Year’s Day when they overcame a 20-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat Baylor 42-41 in their first Cotton Bowl.
A decade before winning three national championships at Alabama, Nick Saban was the coach at Michigan State.
After months of great college football and predictions, we finally have our College Football Playoffs top four. On MSU’s final offensive play of the game, Scott ran to his right and was met at the 1 by a gang of desperate Hawkeyes, but they couldn’t stop him from scoring.
The winners of those two semifinals meet January 11 in Glendale, Ariz., for the national title.
Against Michigan State, it will be strength against strength.
Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples, Ben Glicksman and Colin Becht break down the college football playoff matchup between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Michigan State Spartans.
Alabama (12-1) pulled away from Florida in the SEC Championship to win, 29-15.
But not playing on championship weekend allowed for the Big Ten champ to gain the upper hand. “Looking through the season, the one thing we’ve heard is, it’s a lot of luck. But I think in this profession, we’re all sort of bigamists in some degree in terms of we’re married and we have children and we have grandchildren, but we’re also married to our job”, Saban said. “It was dogfight. That’s probably one of the tougher teams we played this year and they came out the play the whole game, but I felt we kind of wore them down at the end”.
“I would not be in this position as a head coach had I not been afforded the opportunity to come to Michigan State by Nick”, Dantonio said. “We didn’t play pretty all the time, but this team has shown tremendous resiliency to play the next play, do what they have to do next”. “It’s never going to be flawless but it’s the best they’ve done and they did a great job of getting the four best teams”.
Another year, another Clemson vs. Oklahoma bowl game.
So the selection committee did the Crimson Tide a favor by bracketing Michigan State with Alabama and keeping Oklahoma in the other side. For instance, 10-2 Northwestern was No. 13 and 9-3 MI was No. 14.
The Spartans definitely benefited from an appearance in the Big Ten championship game while Oklahoma was sidelined. They are both conference champions and both 4-0 against top 25 teams.
The entirely different group of Michigan Sate players wearing the green and white now will get to find out just how different of a program they really have from that Kirk Cousins-led group, for better or worse.
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“The bottom line is, this team is incredibly close, incredibly tight, very selfless and very motivated to get us back to being a championship-caliber team”, said Stoops, a former Florida assistant.
