College Football Playoff Open Thread

Welcome to the era of the College Football Playoffs! Finally!!!!!!! After all these years of absurdity, we finally have a semi-OK playoff season.

This is far from a perfect season. After all, because there are for some reasons still conferences other than the Big 10 and SEC who have a say over this, the top 4 conference champions have byes, which means that the Ohio State-Tennessee winner has to play Oregon, meaning 3 of the top 7 teams in football are clustered together. That’s a tough draw for my Ducks and a brutal first round game for both the Buckeyes and the Vols,

But still, we are here. And thank God for it.

Tonight is a preview of a huge day tomorrow (which pissed off the NFL tomorrow that they moved two marquee games to Saturday to try and reclaim the day from the NCAA; more on this mañana). The College Football Playoff era starts with the 10 seed Indiana at the 7 seed Notre Dame. This is the most exciting to happen in Indiana since Mike Pence was once stuck in an elevator alone with a woman who was not Mother!

First, one great thing about the playoff is that Indiana, one of the traditionally worst programs in a power conference that has literally never been good in my entire life, not even really when they had Antwaan Randle-El as their QB/Do Everything Guy, has a chance to win it all. How cool is that?

One thing about this game is that neither team really has great wins and that’s the case of a lot of teams this year. Some of this has to do with the superconferences meaning some years you just aren’t going to face a lot of good teams. Indiana’s easy schedule is well noted. They got pretty well bombed by Ohio State and nearly lost to Michigan. Yes, they wiped the floor with their other 10 opponents. But what does it really mean? Meanwhile, Notre Dame was pretty much in the same boat because of their alliance with the ACC, which looks worse for them every year. But by God, ,you aren’t getting no Notre Dame into some damn conference. Amazingly, this means that Notre Dame can never get a first round bye under the current system!

I’m not going to dwell on how the Irish lost to Northern Illinois back in September. Long time ago. But despite everyone thinking they are going to wipe the floor with Indiana, aren’t they really the same team? Yes, they beat ranked Navy and Army teams, but c’mon, no one really thinks those teams were actually among the top 25 teams in the country. Basically, like Indiana, they blew out a lot of inferior opponents. The one time after September they did play a fairly good team, they had to sneak past Louisville at home. They gave up 35 points to a hopeless USC team in the last game. They do have a tough running attack, no question. But Riley Leonard is no great shakes at QB. And you wonder about that defense. One additional complicating factor, which is the weather. Going to be snowy and cold and Indiana QB Kurtis Rourke is from Canada and wants to play in it.

All this leads us to Notre Dame being -7 here. While I am skeptical about Notre Dame, as you can see, I struggle to see how this is an inappropriate line. This is the biggest game in the history of Indiana football. Notre Dame hasn’t really won a big game in forever. But…..it’s in South Bend and that crowd is pretty hungry for some postseason success. Right now, the minimum price for a ticket on the resale market according to ESPN is $504; tomorrow’s games are between $35-$76, for comparison. It’ll be loud in South Bend! Love what Curt Cignetti has done and Rourke is a tough QB, but can Indiana stop the Notre Dame offense? I suspect a high scoring game and I am going to take Notre Dame -7, but that feels just about right.