TCU Says SE-who? and Play-off Preview

TCU showed the college football world they really did belong in the 4 team play-off after they put an absolute beat-down on Ole Miss, 42-3. It was not even a game. The mighty SEC West either forgot to show up today or they really weren’t that mighty. Mississippi State suffered a similar fate against a good, but not great Georgia Tech team. Should Alabama lose tomorrow, this whole SEC West was the best is gonna look extremely silly.

Boise State showed once again they belong with the college football elite. Their 38-30 victory over Arizona should vault them into a top 15 final ranking.

As for a preview of tomorrow’s semi-final games:

I believe the two best coaches in all of college football will square off when Alabama and Ohio State lock horns tomorrow night. At last check, Bama is a 9 point favorite. Bama has better players but I like both coaches’ ability to scheme a great game plan with a month to prepare. I don’t think Alabama is gonna run away with it.

Oregon is a also a 9 point favorite over Florida State. I think anyone not living in Tallahassee, FL is cheering for Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariotta and Oregon to finally put Florida State away. Florida State is really living on borrowed time as they have barely escaped against several average teams this year.

The more compelling story will be what happens in the final. We all presume it will be Oregon vs. Alabama on January 12th. The key to this presumed match-up will be that Alabama head coach Nick Saban won’t have the same month to prepare. Additionally, the quicker turn-around should help Oregon. Their offense is of course predicated on quick strike, up-tempo, timing plays. I think playing a game prior to potentially meeting Alabama will greatly help Oregon. They should be a little more in rythm. I thought when Oregon played Cam Newton and Auburn a few years ago, the long lay-off before the game hurt them. They were out of sync.

We’ll see how things play out tomorrow but it should be a ton of fun to watch the games with so much on the line.

Regardless of who the eventual champion is, I don’t see how you can rank TCU anything less than #3 at the end of the season. It’s an absolute shame they were left out, or that the play-off field was not 8 teams. I wrote about this the morning after the final rankings were released. College Football play-off just as crooked as BCS

I guess we’ll never know what TCU could have done. However, we know they were able to expose the fact that the SEC West just not as good as we were told all year long.