Well, it happened.
Ohio State came into conference championship game weekend needing serious help to reach the College Football Playoff. And it got just that.
Utah throttled USC in the Pac-12 Championship Game, 47-24, in Las Vegas on Friday night.
Does that mean the Buckeyes are now in the field? They almost surely are.
“Ohio State has officially clinched a spot in the College Football Playoff,” one fan predicted.
“Ohio State likely just got the help it needed to make the College Football Playoff as USC loses to Utah in the Pac-12 Championship Game,” another writer wrote.
Others, meanwhile, were less convinced (or happy, at least).
“That’s gonna be all she wrote for USC’s Playoff hopes. Would have been better off starting 11-0, losing at home by 23 in its last game and not advancing to its conference championship game. Obviously,” Stewart Mandel wrote, clearly taking a shot at Ohio State.
Of course, that’s an extremely flawed and illogical way of looking at this. USC and Ohio State did not play the same schedule. The Buckeyes lost to the No. 2 team in the country, while the Trojans have now lost twice to a non-College Football Playoff top four team.
“USC and Ohio state both went 11-1. Ohio state happened to play in a league with divisions and happened to share a division with a top 2 team. Buckeyes would destroy usc,” Brandon Walker wrote.
College football insider Brett McMurphy has updated his bowl predictions, too:
- Peach: UGA -5 Ohio St
- Fiesta: Michigan -5½ TCU
- Rose: Penn State -1½ Utah
- Sugar: Bama -6½ Kansas St
- Orange: Clemson -1 Tenn or Tenn -6½ UNC
- Cotton: USC -5 Tulane or USC -7 UCF
The next couple of days are going to be fun arguing, that is for sure.
The official College Football Playoff foursome will come out on Sunday.