The bowls are over, and we have the two teams playing for the National Championship. I'll conclude this column by picking a winner in that contest, but let's start by looking at the overall results of the bowls. With ESPN's "Bowl Challenge Cup", many people may already know these results, but I did notice a decrease in promoting the results once it was clear that the Big Ten would win (further evidence that ESPN, the corporate entity, has a mandate to downplay and tarnish the accomplishments of the Big Ten Conference). For those who missed it, the final results are:
- Big Ten 7-1
- Sun Belt 4-1
- Big XII 5-3
- American Athletic 4-3
- Mountain West 3-3
- SEC 4-5
- Conference USA 4-5
- ACC 4-6
- MAC 1-4
- Pac-12 1-8
Michigan proved to be the spoiler for the Big Ten. Going into New Years Day, they had an unbeaten 7-0 record and were attempting to something NO conference who has sent more than 3 teams to the bowls had ever done -- finish the bowl season unbeaten. Michigan led by 16 points midway through the game, but then became unraveled and lost the game. It was still a great accomplishment for the conference, especially since they were the underdog in three of the games they won.
This was already a record-setting bowl result for one conference. With their 1-8 record, the Pacific Area Conference had their worst bowl performance in conference history, no matter what number appears after their PAC abbreviation.
Another interesting result were the games that pitted a Power 5 conference team against a Group of 5 team. There were eight such match-ups, and the Group of 5 team won five of those. In NONE of those were the Group of 5 team favored (as most national analysts think very little of the Group of 5 conferences), despite two of them matching a ranked Group of 5 team against an unranked Power 5 team. While I could hope that this result would elevate the opinion of Group of 5 conferences among national analysts, I know it will take many more results than one year to do so.
As a result of the bowl games, here is the final Top 25 ranking:
- Alabama Crimson Tide (12-1)
- Georgia Bulldogs (13-1)
- Ohio State Buckeyes (12-2)
- Oklahoma Sooners (12-2)
- Penn State Nittany Lions (11-2)
- UCF Golden Knights (13-0)
- Wisconsin Badgers (13-1)
- Clemson Tigers (12-2)
- Oklahoma State Cowboys (10-3)
- Washington Huskies (10-3)
- Auburn Tigers (10-4)
- TCU Horned Frogs (11-3)
- South Florida Bulls (10-2)
- Notre Dame Fighting Irish (10-3)
- USC Trojans (11-3)
- Troy Trojans (11-2)
- Florida Atlantic Owls (11-3)
- Virginia Tech Hokies (9-4)
- Boise State Broncos (11-3)
- Stanford Cardinal (9-5)
- Northwestern Wildcats (10-3)
- Miami Hurricanes (10-3)
- Memphis Tigers (10-3)
- Michigan State Spartans (10-3)
- Ohio Bobcats (9-4)
Now, let's talk about the National Championship. Alabama plays in their sixth Championship game in ten years, while Georgia has never played in a championship game, and has only one championship in their history. Much has been made about Nick Saban's record against former assistants, but that's not what I'm using to make my decision. I care about how they played. Alabama scored 24 points against the reputed best defense in the bowl games. Georgia's vaulted defense was not overly effective at holding back Oklahoma. Granted, the Sooners had one of the best offenses in the bowls, much better than Alabama's, but it shows that the Bulldogs defense isn't as strong as reputed. Defenses are crucial to winning championships, and the Tide definitely has the better one. ALABAMA
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