An unconvincing win by Ohio State and several odd circumstances during the pandemic have left the College Football Playoff with a jumble to consider.
This fiasco of a college football season, in which no amount of coaches’ scheming or testing or contact tracing could keep the coronavirus from wreaking havoc, stumbled toward an inevitably messy finish on what in a normal year might be celebrated as a championship Saturday. Instead, as Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly threatened a playoff boycott, and Ohio State bumbled its way to the Big Ten title with 22 players sidelined — presumably the result of a final pregame round of virus tests — the College Football Playoff committee may have a decision that is not as neat and tidy as it would have wanted. In this year, and others, the playoff committee — for all its boasting of football intellect — has been little more than a boxing matchmaker, releasing weekly rankings in November and December as a way to gin up interest (and outrage) before ultimately providing a rather obvious four-team field that will make the television networks happy. Now in its seventh season, the committee has never been left with such a jumbled set of circumstances as the one it will have to sort through before Sunday’s announcement of which four teams will play in the Jan.1 semifinals at the Sugar Bowl and (perhaps) the Rose Bowl. There are no September nonconference games to use as barometers. There is no common number of results, with Ohio State (6-0) having played five fewer games the other leading contenders. After this weekend, the committee also may have to consider the effect of virus test results on a team’s ability to compete. Among the players missing for Ohio State on Saturday were the star receiver Chris Olave, linebacker Baron Browning and punter Drue Chrisman. Ohio State does not announce whether players have tested positive, but Chrisman said on Twitter that he had (and that “this virus has not been pleasant”). According to Big Ten rules, players who test positive must sit out for 21 days, raising the possibility that some of the Buckeyes who missed Saturday’s game would also miss a playoff semifinal in less than two weeks.
