And No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl, for the purposes of proving the Las Vegas odds-makers correct.
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Tyrone Crowder, a third-team all-ACC performer at right guard, helped Clemson down North Carolina to win the ACC championship Saturday night in Charlotte. For the Sooners, the semifinal is opportunity to avenge last year’s blowout loss at the hands of the Clemson Tigers in the Russell Athletic Bowl.
“I’ve been on both sides”, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney told reporters in a media conference call hours after the bowl pairings were announced.
Still, if you ask most of the college football republic, a move to eight teams is only a matter of when.
Unlike the Clemson-Oklahoma matchup, this game will be sure to please the defensively-inclined college football fans, as it pits the second-ranked defense of the Crimson Tide against the 26th-ranked Spartans.
Outside of Cooks injury to his throwing arm, the Spartans are good enough and deep enough to win this game and the national championship but its not going to happen.
The bowl games are coming!
But there’s more to consider by adding teams to the playoffs. OSU got the All State Sugar Bowl bid with a second-place finish in the Big 12 Conference. In the end, the only real debate was how to rank the top four teams. He will test Oklahoma’s defense through the air as well as on the ground; Watson rushed for more than 100 yards in four of the past five games.
Clemson football quarterback Deshaun Watson, left, and offensive guard Eric Mac Lain celebrate during a pizza party celebrating Selection Sunday at Memorial Stadium, Sunday, Dec. 6, 2015, in Clemson, S.C. The former walk-on has passed for 3,389 yards and 35 touchdowns against just five interceptions this season. I think you’ve got to keep putting quality football teams in a position where it gets talked about, and you know, hopefully there continues to be an appetite for college football at a deeper level. I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw a lot of counters and that sort of thing, to try to get these big guys moving one way, and then try to use the leverage to move them that way as they did a little bit against Iowa in the championship game. That’s not to besmirch Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield, that’s for sure, because Mayfield has been simply outstanding since the early-October loss to Texas. QB Jake Coker has thrown for 2,489 yards and 17 touchdowns while completing 65.7 percent of his passes.
“I’d go Oklahoma and Clemson just because we picked games and every single one of us had Oklahoma beating Clemson”.
Alabama is the only repeat performer from last season’s inaugural playoff, which followed the sport’s 16-year marriage to a Bowl Championship Series title game.
They’ll be facing the No. 4 Oklahoma Sooners in the semi finals. “It has been a fun season for us, and it’s great to be able to go pole to pole as the No. 1 team”. They are a different team.
It’s going to be one heck of a bowl season for college football fans. Meanwhile, Alabama has a 68% chance to beat No. 3 seed Michigan State.
December 31 in a semifinal in the Orange Bowl. “Now that I’m not coaching, I can say that”.
In this weekly feature I’ll highlight a handful of the lessons this Alabama Football team is teaching me.
Also on January 1, 2016, MI takes on Florida in the Orlando Citrus Bowl while Notre Dame and Ohio State will face off in the Fiesta Bowl. Alabama is making its ninth consecutive bowl appearance under head coach Nick Saban and the 12th straight overall for the school.
The Tigers now own the nation’s longest winning streak at 16 games, but Swinney knows how hard of a task it can be to remain unscathed, especially against this level of competition.
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Long said bumping Michigan State past Oklahoma had nothing to do with avoiding the possibility of having the Sooners play close to home in the Dallas area.
