Michigan, Washington, Texas, Alabama reach CFP
Michigan, Washington, Texas and Alabama have actually been chosen by the College Football Playoff committee to vie for the national championship, excluding Florida State– the very first time in CFP history an undefeated Power 5 champion stopped working to end up in the leading four.Michigan will deal with Alabama in the Rose Championship Game Presented by Prudential, while Washington will play Texas in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Both semifinal games will be used New Year’s Day and aired on ESPN.”We’re going against the best,”Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh said Sunday.”Tradition. 2 real blue bloods of football, dealing with Alabama.”We’re excited to face them. It’s renowned.
It’s Alabama. It’s Roll Tide. It’s doesn’t get any much better, to be playing in the Rose Bowl. Simply going to appreciate the custom of the Rose Bowl, playing a fantastic team like Alabama. It always has meaning.” The Wolverines and Huskies, undefeated conference champs,
were shoo-ins to make the CFP. Michigan remains in the playoff for the 3rd straight year. Washington, on the other hand, has actually been in the CFP just once before, losing in the semifinals in the 2016 season.The decision for the No. 4 spot was between Alabama and Florida State, CFP choice committee chair Boo Corrigan said Sunday.Editor’s Picks 2 Associated Ultimately, nevertheless, Corrigan, the ACC athletic director at NC State
, indicated quarterback Jordan Travis’
season-ending injury in November as the crucial factor Florida State was neglected.” Florida State is a various team without Jordan Travis,”Corrigan said.”Among the things we do consider
is player availability, and our job is to rank the best teams, and in the decision looking at that, it was Alabama at 4 and Florida State at 5.”FSU(13-0 )ended up with a greater strength of record (No. 3)than Alabama(No. 4). The Seminoles, who won the ACC title, also went 2-0 against SEC groups this season– including an emphatic victory over LSU to open the season.”It was a tough night,”Alabama coach Nick Saban told ESPN on Sunday.” I didn’t sleep a lot because there’s a lot
of great teams out there. Florida State’s certainly a good group, and to go undefeated in their league, it’s regrettable that some great team needed to get excluded.”But I truly believe that our team made the right to be here. We beat No. 1 Georgia in the SEC national championship. They’ve worked hard all year to
enhance, and I’m really proud of what they’ve been able to achieve together as a group.” The Seminoles ended up at No. 5, in spite of winning the ACC with their third-string quarterback after backup Tate Rodemaker was ruled out of Saturday’s game with a concussion.Two-time safeguarding nationwide champion Georgia (No. 6), another group with an engaging argument for playoff addition, is also on the outdoors looking in.College Football Playoff Semifinals Rose Championship Game Presented by
Prudential No. 1 Michigan vs. No. 4 Alabama 5 p.m. ET, ESPN Allstate Sugar Bowl No. 2 Washington vs. No. 3 Texas 8:45 p.m. ET, ESPN Texas, which is back in the running for the championship game after reserving
its first trip to the playoff, opened as a 4-point favorite over Washington in the Sugar Bowl, per ESPN BET.Led by quarterback Quinn Ewers, the Longhorns went 12-1 and won the Big 12 champion in their very first appearance in
the conference title game considering that its return in 2017. Texas’lone loss came at the hands of Oklahoma in the Red River Competition game– both schools will head to the SEC after this season– however the Longhorns ‘case for the playoff was buoyed by their September victory over Alabama in Tuscaloosa.”I’m just happy to be a part of a team that has the ability to enjoy it that much since they know what it resembles to be neglected at 5-7,” Ewers said.” I believe in the back of our heads we constantly knew that if we were going to win the Big 12 championship, that other accolades would most likely feature it. So I suggest, our bull’s -eye now is on a championship game for
sure.”The Huskies, seeded No. 2, remain in the playoff for the second time– having lost to Alabama in the 2016 semifinal. They all however locked up their playoff spot with their triumph versus Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game on Friday. “The league was as hard as, “Washington coach Kalen DeBoer stated Sunday.”… And so us representing the Pac-12 here in the in 2015, it’s an honor. It’s something that, obviously, we take a
lot of pride in as far as representing, however we ‘d love to represent the Pac-12 here in this last year in a fantastic method. “Like Texas, Alabama also proved that one big win can make up for an early loss. The Crimson Tide moved the dynamic by ending Georgia’s
29-game, 728-day winning streak with a 27-24 victory in the SEC championship game on Saturday.At that point, it seemed like an inevitability that the SEC champ would make it into the playoff, since of the league’s dominance in the CFP considering that its creation– with a look by the conference each season since the playoff’s inception in
2014. Saban’s squad faced difficulties atypical for Alabama, scuffling through the early part of the schedule, consisting of the loss at home to Texas, while dealing with uncertainty at quarterback.Jalen Milroe started and completed the season as the group’s top quarterback, but both Ty Simpson and Tyler Buchner were offered opportunities to take control of the position in Tommy Rees’first year as Alabama offensive organizer.” We won 10 or 11 games in a row and beat the No. 1 group in the country so we’re not the same group that we were when we played Texas previously in the season,”Saban said Sunday.” We were sort of in transition at the quarterback position, it was upsetting. I think it affected our group.”… This is just among those years– and there’s
been other years like this– where, you understand, somebody that may have been deserving got neglected. And Florida State definitely going unbeaten was … you understand, [they] did everything they might to get in the playoffs and sadly,
probably due to the fact that of the injury to their quarterback, are not going to have that chance. “Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said he thought it was great that Alabama wasn’t penalized for losing to the Longhorns in their early season clash.”There’s a lot of value to play in those types of games early in the year, and undoubtedly for the committee to recognize that, I believe, is huge because now, hopefully, that’ll continue to promote more games like that,”Sarkisian said.Final College Football Playoff Rankings Group Tape-record 1. Michigan 13-0 2. Washington 13-0 3. Texas 12-1 4. Alabama 12-1 5. Florida State 13-0 6. Georgia 12-1 7. Ohio State 11-1 8. Oregon 11-2 9. Missouri 10-2 10. Penn State 10-2 11. Ole Miss 10-2 12. Oklahoma 10-2 13. LSU 9-3 14. Arizona 9-3 15. Louisville 10-3 16. Notre Dame 9-3 17. Iowa 10-3 18. NC State 9-3 19. Oregon State 8-4 20. Oklahoma State 9-4 21. Tennessee 8-4 22. Clemson 8-4 23.
Liberty 12-0 24. SMU 11-2 25. Kansas State 8-4 Corrigan said the CFP selection committee leaned on former coaches such as Chris Ault (Nevada ), Jim Grobe(Wake Forest)and Joe Taylor( Florida A&M) to address two concerns while pondering Alabama and Florida State:”Who do you want to play? Who do you not
| desire | to play | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ?” Both answers led to the Seminoles’circumstance at quarterback after losing Travis, their team leader and the ACC Player of year, with a damaged leg against North | Alabama on | |||
| Nov. 18. Since the FSU offense had a hard time to move the ball in both games without Travis– wins | ||||
| against competing | Florida and then | |||
| Louisville– it | ended up being clear that this group was not the very same, regardless of winning | |||
| its first ACC championship given that 2014. Coach Mike Norvell pounded his | ||||
| fist on the table as he made an emphatic case for | the Seminoles to make | |||
| it due to the fact that they had | won | |||
| all their games | — and did it with | |||
| 3 quarterbacks.Overlooked was the play of FSU’s defense. Over the two | games because Travis was harmed, the Seminoles had a combined 13 sacks– and held | |||
| those 2 challengers to absolutely no or unfavorable | ||||
| yards in the fourth quarter.On Sunday, | as he watched the choice program with his | team, he could only bow his head as the Seminoles’fate was decided by the CFP committee. | “I simply hurt for our players, to be sincere | with |
| you,”Norvell said Sunday.”That was among the tougher moments
I’ve had to experience. … As we tell our group all the time:’ Your truest identity shows up in times of great adversity.’And we faced it, and they put it on display. So that was actually that feeling in the minute.”Florida State, which has actually won 19 straight games– the second-longest streak in the country– will now head to the Orange Bowl to handle Georgia.The Crimson Tide will now have a possibility to win their fourth College Football Playoff title in the last year of the four-team format, but they will do so as an underdog.Michigan opened as 2-point favorites over Alabama in the Rose Bowl, according to ESPN BET.”We’re not going to enter there saying, ‘Oh, this is Alabama, a team that’s won and won and won and won and won.’No. We’re that team,”Michigan running back Blake Corum told reporters.The CFP Championship game Presented by AT&T will be played in Houston on Jan. 8 (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN App ).”We have actually accomplished a lot of our objectives, and now winning all of it is what we had actually likewise put on the goal sheet,”Harbaugh said.”That’s what we’ll turn our one-track mind to, to this next opponent and playing Alabama in the final 4, and we’ll do what we constantly do. We’ll play, we’ll prepare, we’ll practice and prepare to give it our best.”ESPN’s Andrea Adelson, Mark Schlabach, Tom VanHaaren and Dave Wilson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. |