And the College Football Playoff winner will be.
Alabama, of course.
After all, it just wouldn’t be right for the national champion to come from some league other than the Southeastern Conference for a third straight season, would it?
Would it?
This isn’t to say the Crimson Tide can’t be beaten by Big Ten champion Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Eve or by the Clemson-Oklahoma winner in the national championship game Jan. 11 in Phoenix, Ariz.
Even Bama boss Nick Saban told ESPN on Sunday: “Everybody in this final four can beat anybody else.”
And that would certainly appear to hold true for Michigan State, which has won six of its past seven games against top-five teams, including Ohio State and Iowa over the past month. Sparty doesn’t always look the part, but coach Mark Dantonio routinely has one of the nation’s stiffest defenses and is the only coach in the country to win at least 11 games five of the past six seasons.
But Dantonio is also facing the fact that Saban has never lost to a former assistant during his time at Alabama – think Tennessee’s Derek Dooley, Florida’s Jim McElwain – which Dantonio was during Saint Nick’s stint at Michigan State before he took the LSU job.
Bama is also the only one of the four playoff teams to have played in last year’s semifinals – Oregon, Florida State and eventual national champ Ohio State all failed to return to the playoffs this season.
Said Saban, whose Tiders were also the only one of the four schools not to watch Sunday’s selection show as a group: “I’ll tell my team today, ‘Guys, you should be excited and happy, but I have a question: What do you want to do now?’ Last year I thought our team thought, ‘Why are we working so hard?’ I don’t think we’ll have that problem this year.”
Saban clearly likes this team. More than once he’s called it perhaps the favorite of his nine Tide squads.
“They did it the right way,” he told ESPN on Sunday afternoon. “That’s why I want them to have success.”
But he also said something that might explain why the Tide has missed the national title game the past two seasons.
“There was a real togetherness with this group,” he noted after Saturday’s win over Florida. “We haven’t had lots of problems. I don’t have to call guys in at all. Everybody sort of bought in. Really a fun team to coach. Sometimes you have really good teams that have talent, but they also with that talent comes some issues. This team doesn’t have a lot of issues.”
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney’s biggest issue Sunday was buying 2,500 pizzas for nearly 30,000 Tiger fans to devour during a celebration of the Tigers’ undefeated season and Atlantic Coast Conference title.
“When I first got this job on an interim basis in 2008, my goal was for us to become a consistent program,” he said. “Six of the last seven years we’ve been in the top 10. But now it’s a new season and Oklahoma is a phenomenal team. We’re going to have a very small margin for error.”
A year ago, it was Oklahoma that apparently made all the errors against the Tigers, losing 40-6 in the Russell Athletic Bowl. As one might expect, Sooners coach Bob Stoops didn’t exactly shy away from the notion that his players might use that as motivation.
“I can’t say it won’t be on the players’ minds,” he said during an ESPN interview, then quickly added, “It should be.”
It’s also worth pointing out that the last time Bama faced Michigan State, at the close of the 2010 season, the Tide rolled 45-6, though that’s not likely to be on the minds of any Spartans since they weren’t around then.
Nor are there any Northwestern players still around to recall the 48-28 Citrus Bowl whipping Tennessee put on the Wildcats at the close of the 1996 season. But Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald was a starting linebacker that season for the Big Ten’s most prestigious academic institution, so it’s likely he has a long, sharp memory regarding that lopsided loss to then-junior quarterback Peyton Manning and the Volunteers.
But while this year’s Outback Bowl matchup could get interesting, it and every other non-playoff bowl is merely window dressing for the fortunate four semifinalists.
And while it’s true any of these four could win it, Oklahoma may actually have been the most impressive of the four down the stretch, winning its seven games since an Oct. 10 loss to Texas by an average of 52-19, including at Baylor and Oklahoma State.
In somewhat echoing Saban’s affection for this Bama team, Stoops told ESPN regarding his Sooners: “This may be my best practice team in 17 years.”
Somewhat unimpressed, ESPN analyst and former Georgia Bulldog David Pollack said of Oklahoma’s late run: “Their best three wins (Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma State) were against backup quarterbacks.”
That said, the Sooners are certainly good enough to knock off Clemson in the Orange Bowl. But they won’t. Nor will Michigan State shock Alabama and Heisman Trophy favorite Derrick Henry.
Instead, Alabama alum Dabo Swinney will have to beat his alma mater if the Tigers are to claim their first national championship since the 1981 season.
“A lot of people said we were a year away,” Swinney said Sunday. “But these guys were dialed in on 2015.”
The national championship will be played on the 11th day of 2016, however. And with Bama being the only team with experience in this event, make it the Tide 31, Tigers 27.
Then don’t be surprised if one year soon Swinney replaces Saban as Bama’s coach, quite possibly after guiding Clemson to a win over Tennessee in next year’s national championship game.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.