Now that the College Football Playoff semifinals have all bee played, I think it is clear who is going to win the National Championship. Ohio State is playing lights out – at a level the other teams have not shown. The Michigan game must have woken the Buckeyes up as it certainly opened up their playbook.

Since the original observations of the bowl season article on December 29th, I have to say that Ohio State now has the most impressive win of the bowl season and the second most impressive win as well. Arizona State surely impressed in defeat – that program is heading in the right direction for sure. Penn State was quite impressive as well and the Big Ten is surely going to be loaded next year as Michigan is back folks. Think about Michigan for a moment – they have wins over Ohio State and Alabama in their last two games. Alabama who was arguably a CFP team and Ohio State, the team that appears poised to win the whole thing. If Ohio State goes on to win the whole thing, then Michigan will win the “Psychological Warfare” National Championship as every Buckeye fan will still remember that upset in Columbus back in November.

Speaking of Alabama, the talking heads and coaches who made the most noise pinned to Alabama and Ole Miss as the two teams that should have possibly snuck in ahead of SMU as the 12th team in the playoffs. While true, SMU did not look good in their opening round loss to Penn State, to be honest none of the road teams looked good in the opening round. Alabama went out and lost to Michigan with an offense that looked overmatched by the Michigan defense which was missing key players who sat out of the contest. And Ole Miss destroyed Duke 52-20 in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl, making a much stronger case for their inclusion than Alabama. As a result, Ole Miss gets the 2024 bowl season “We Got Screwed” Award.

Back to the Big Ten, in addition to the Ohio State and Penn State CFP wins, the December 30-31 bowl games included wins by Michigan and Illinois over the SEC and Iowa falling to Missouri in the Music City Bowl, leaving the Big Ten at 6-4 in bowl games plus the Ohio State and Penn State opening round wins at home. Why those games are not considered bowl games is ridiculous by the way…