Let’s get this over with.
There’s nothing to celebrate as school football is on the final line of a dark season amid a terrible pandemic, which is getting worse as Alabama prepares to face Ohio State on Monday night.
More than 4,000 Americans died Thursday, the deadliest day of a nearly one-year pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Many more will lose their lives if Crimson Tide or the chestnut trees of the Indies lift the National Championship trophy in South Florida.
To be honest, school football sometimes has a well-deserved respite from this season of despair.
We appreciate the exploits of Devonta Smith, winner of the Heisman Trophy, and the dynamic attack by Crimson Tide, which took coach Nick Saban to the limit of his seventh record national title.
We were duly inspired by Justin Fields and Ohio State, who have joined Clemson’s unlaught coach Dabo Swinney with a dominant semi-final victory, giving the Buckeyes the chance to break South’s deep control over the first prize.
But this ending, if it is the end, as a postponement is reported due to COVID-19 disorders in the Ohio state program, seems more like an awakening than a moment of triumph.
After the eruption of cancellations and hasty schedule changes, more commonly empty stages and an overly familiar hypocrisy, as well as the daily account with a highly contagious virus and the concern that we might not delight in his final anger for years, It is difficult to muster the power to inspire something at this time.
“It’s been a year, ” said Ohio State cornerer Marcus Wlliamson.
The Buckeyes illustrate this like anyone else.
It looked like they wouldn’t even have a season when the Big Ten wouldn’t play in the fall, but the league changed course after the Southeast Conference and others made it to the chart in late September.
Ohio State nevertheless opened its season on October 24, but eventually played only five regular-season games, which was not enough to qualify for the Big Ten championship game.
Once again, the convention called an audible, canceling the six-game minimum to allow the Buckeyes 5-0 to face Northwestern in the name game. They knocked out the Wildcats, secured a spot in the school football playoffs and beat Clemson 49-28 in the Sugar Bowl semi-finals.
A whirlwind, of course.
“I’m about to complete this the right way, then take a deep breath, relax and look to think about what just happened this year,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said.
In the midst of all the fuss, the playoffs retained their four-team format, only Power Five (Power Four, in fact, since Pac-12 left football).
Rejecting expansion is actually a prudent selection this season. The last thing we needed was even more games.
But once this pandemic is over, or at least under control, school football will have to make primary adjustments to a playoff formula that is necessarily closed to everyone, unless the programs are tougher.
Alabama and Clemson have reached the playoffs each year, one since their release in 2014, Ohio State and Oklahoma each have four appearances. Notre Dame, inexplicably, is the only other show with multiple appearances.
In total, 11 schools have reached the playoffs in their seven-year history, an unacceptable clique when there are 130 schools in the NCAA Football Bowl Branch.
As long as things stay the way they are, and rest a lot of confidence that’s precisely what the most demanding schools need, those same schools will dominate recruitment year after year, sharing the most productive players while everyone settles for leftovers.
These will be groups with a valid chance to compete for a championship at the end of the season, especially with a variety format that obviously opposes non-Power Five shows.
This season, the PSC’s final standings placed the undefeated Cincinnati in eighth place: Oklahoma with two losses and Florida with three losses.
Iowa State lost three times, adding a 31-14 home run through Louisiana, but finished No. 10 and won a high-level invitation to the Fiesta Bowl. Ragin Cajuns? They lost a game, opposed to the Campion of the Sun Belt Conference Coastal Carolina in a basket at the last minute, but ended up ridiculously ranked 19th in the CFP standings and were moved to something called frist Responder Bowl.
And, of course, there was Coastal Carolina, which beat 11-0 the normal season, beat Brigham Young in what might well be considered the game of the year, but was thought to be the twelfth most productive team. through the PSC.
Obviously, those less publicized systems wouldn’t have done so well betting on a full list of games at one of the big conferences. But they deserve to be identified by their achievements, which simply have no chance in the existing format.
The playoffs will have to come with at least 8 teams. A format of 16 computers would be even better.
But that’s a challenge for the day.
“The message we said as a team is that we have one more,” said Ohio State defensive end Jonathon Cooper. “There’s nothing else after that. “
Lucky for you.
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Paul Newberry is a sports columnist for the Associated Press. Write to pnewberry (at) ap. org or https://twitter. com/pnewberry196 His paintings may be in https://apnews. com/search/paulnewberry
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