After all the bluster about mayhem, College Football Playoff turns out to be quite simple

If there’s an under-appreciated brilliance to the current structure of the College Football Playoff, it lies in the format’s ability to inspire weeks of conjecture and pontification about doomsday scenarios and difficult decisions, only to be so simple and uncontroversial in the end.

All the time the selection committee put in over the last six weeks, all those trips to Dallas every Monday, only to have their work done for them. By Saturday night, after all the conference championship games were played, it was close but obvious that LSU should be the No. 1 over Ohio State and that Big 12 champion Oklahoma was the only real candidate for the No. 4 spot. 

Boom, done, easy. 

After weeks of speculation about how messy things could get with so many teams in the mix down the stretch, 2019 turned out to be arguably the cleanest decision of the Playoff era, which hasn’t had many huge controversies to begin with. For all the hand-wringing about a four-team Playoff versus having eight teams — and, indeed, there’s a good argument for expansion — a deserving team has rarely been left out.

When the weekend began, there was a chance for controversy and chaos. Had Utah won the Pac 12 title game, the argument between the Utes and the Big 12 champion would have been fierce because they would have presented similar résumés and vulnerabilities. Had Georgia won the SEC championship game, putting two SEC teams in the Playoff and knocking out two Power Five conferences, a large faction of the country would have immediately demanded expansion. There was even a chance Wisconsin, which led Ohio State 21-7 at one point Saturday night, could have thrown a wrench into the debate as a two-loss Big Ten champion.  

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Instead, the committee got lucky — again. Utah lost to Oregon, Georgia never really had a chance against LSU and Wisconsin’s upset bid faded in the second half. Though committee chairman Rob Mullens alluded on ESPN to at least some debate between the Sooners and Georgia, that was merely stagecraft and due diligence. This time, there was no need for the committee to stay up debating into the wee hours of the night. 

But there was one big decision to be made, and it certainly feels like the committee got it right. As good as Ohio State has been this year and as many quality wins as the Buckeyes banked over the course of the season, LSU’s closing argument for the No. 1 seed was a 37-10 win over a previously 11-1 Georgia team in Atlanta. On top of earlier wins over Florida, Auburn and at Alabama — all teams ranked in the top 15 — nobody put together a better regular season than the Tigers. 

“It was a similar debate we’ve had every week,” Mullens, the Oregon athletics director, said. “These teams have been extremely close. We’ve been round and round each week — one does something to move just above. And the key elements this week were we’ve seen an LSU defense the last couple weeks that is healthy, playing solid and you add to that an impressive win against a Georgia team that was our No. 4 team last week moved LSU up one last time.”

In just about any other year, the Buckeyes would have been a clear No. 1 seed. And had they dominated start-to-finish against Wisconsin, the committee might have found it a little bit more difficult to move them down a spot.

Instead, they were flat in the first half of the Big Ten title game — which is understandable when you consider they had their Playoff spot wrapped up, had already beaten Wisconsin 38-7 in October and were at the tail end of a brutal closing stretch of the season that included games against Penn State and Michigan in consecutive weeks leading up to Saturday. 

The fact that Ohio State got tested Saturday and responded with a dominant second half is the kind of thing that could absolutely pay dividends in the Playoff. Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, however, they’ll have to prove it against No. 3 Clemson, which might actually be the best team in the country but didn’t get seeded that way because the ACC provided no opportunities for wins over highly ranked opponents. 

Mullens said the committee didn’t consider the Ohio State/LSU debate through the lens of facing Clemson in the semifinals, but playing Oklahoma instead of the defending national champion was undoubtedly a key incentive for getting the No. 1 seed.

In the end, though, it feels right for LSU to be there. The Tigers got the single best win of the season on Nov. 9, beating Alabama 46-41 in Tuscaloosa with Tua Tagovailoa at quarterback. They survived their toughest game of the season, beating Auburn 23-20. And the dominant nature of the Georgia win, holding the Bulldogs to 286 yards, quashed any reservations about LSU’s defense, which had some moments earlier in the year where it looked a bit vulnerable. 

Mullens said LSU’s defense showing up in the SEC championship game and against Texas A&M the prior week in a 50-7 win was enough to overcome the narrative that Ohio State was a more complete team than LSU — “just by a tick.” 

“They’ve been very close,” Mullens said. “We’ve been measuring them at a very detailed level. They’re both conference champions, both had similar schedule strength so we’re into a lot of other elements.”

Though the stakes of the decision were high, a granular discussion over LSU and Ohio State was pretty easy pickings for the committee, all things considered. And those who hoped 2019 would be the year that everyone in college football got so mad that the Playoff would immediately expand are left waiting another year for the apocalypse to come.