There are no controversies in
the College Football Playoff this year. Unlike last year when the Big 12 got
shunted in favour of Big Ten Champion Ohio State, which had the so-called
experts crying foul. The Buckeyes didn’t belong there as the Big Ten was week.
Well, Ohio State proved them wrong by defeating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and then
routing Oregon in the National Championship Game.
The Big 12 will be represented
in the four-team playoff this year as, this time, it’s the Pac-12 that gets
left on the outside. But that’s because their conference champion, Stanford,
had two losses.
The Clemson Tigers get the
number one spot due to their perfect 13-0 season capped with the ACC
Championship victory over the North Carolina Tar Heels, 45-37, the most
exciting game of Championship Weekend. The Tigers will play the Oklahoma
Sooners, winners of the Big 12 and the holders of the number four spot in the
CFP, in the Orange Bowl on December 31.
The Alabama Crimson Tide secured
the second seed. Nick Saban has his team in position to challenge for the
National Championship for the fifth time in seven years, having won three
titles already. The Tide will play in the Cotton Bowl, also on December 31,
against the team that I would like to focus on in this post, the Michigan State
Spartans.
Michigan State will be the team
that I will be rooting for in the CFP. Now, as a Michigan Wolverines’ fan, it
pains me to say that, almost as much as it pained me to cheer for Ohio State
last year. But my loyalty to the Big Ten Conference supersedes any hatred I
harbour towards my team’s two most heated rivals.
But I find the Spartans in the same
position the Buckeyes were in last year. Almost scoffed at because they play in
the Big Ten. For some reason, the Big Ten gets a lot of disrespect from the
college football experts, possibly because it’s not as flashy as the SEC
perhaps, or maybe because of the higher academic standard that the Big Ten schools
hold (you won’t see any basket-weaving at Northwestern), but I feel it’s the
toughest conference in college football. All year I heard analysts on the major
networks talk bad about Iowa’s undefeated season, always pointing out that the
Hawkeye’s played in a weak Western Division. And now that the Spartans beat
Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game on a last-minute touchdown, I expect the
disrespect to start falling on them as well.
Oh, and I’m sure they’ll point
out that Michigan State’s only loss was to an unranked Nebraska Cornhuskers
team, that finished 5-7, their worst since coming into the conference in 2011. And
I’m sure they’ll point out that the only reason they beat Michigan was because
of a bad decision by the Wolverines' punter when he mishandled the snap on the
final play of that game.
They won’t talk about how
Oklahoma lost to a horrible Texas team or that Clemson has looked a little bit
shaky the past two weeks. Or that the Spartans defeated last year’s National
Champions—and pre-season consensus favourite to win again—just a few short
weeks ago. Or that they also beat another pre-season favourite, Oregon, earlier in the season. They’ll just focus on the “weakness” of the Big Ten like they did
last year, you know, before Ohio State shut them up. And I can’t wait for the
Spartans to do the same.
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