Goodbye SEC, hello Ohio State, Oregon in college football title game

Think of recent college football history as a bowl of alphabet soup:For years the “A’s” dominated the B-C-S, as Alabama and Auburn traded national titles in 2009 and 2010, with Alabama reclaiming the crown in 2011 and 2012.Auburn took umbrage and stormed back to last year’s championship game, falling 13 seconds short of a win against Florida State in the Rose Bowl.It looked this season, for the longest time, as if the “M’s” were moving in, as Mississippi State and Mississippi captivated audiences until they got mud thrown in their eyes.Somehow we ended up with the amazing “O’s,” Oregon and Ohio State, who Friday arrived in North Texas in preparation for Monday night’s first College Football Playoff championship game.This matchup of Pac-12 and Big Ten conference champions was not always as improbable as it seems now. Both were top 10 in the preseason polls.Oregon and Ohio State were built around outstanding returning quarterbacks, Marcus Mariota and Braxton Miller, and had plenty to prove. Oregon finished 11-2 in 2013 but lost the Pac-12 North to Stanford for a second straight season. Ohio State’s undefeated season was wrecked by Michigan State in the Big Ten title game.Oregon had the wrap of a “glitz” program until proved otherwise, soft in its underbelly. And the Pac-12 hadn’t won a national title since USC’s since-vacated 2004 season.Ohio State, led by uber-coach Urban Meyer, had lost seven players now starting in the NFL. This season was supposed to be a bridge to 2015. And the Big Ten, which hadn’t produced a champion since Ohio State in 2002, was viewed as a conference in retreat.Oregon and Ohio State were given their due — but not at any expense of defending national champion Florida State or a blockade of teams from the Southeastern Conference, which had put a team in the championship game every season since 2005.By Oct. 2 of this season, the biggest question about Oregon and Ohio State was what to write on their tombstones.Ohio State lost Miller, the two-time Big Ten offensive player of the year, to a shoulder injury before the season’s first official snap, then suffered a 14-point home loss to Virginia Tech on Sept. 6.When Michigan State lost the same day at Oregon, the Big Ten was the first major conference declared as eliminated from playoff contention.Oregon got the hook on Oct. 2 when the Ducks lost at home to Arizona. The next day, ESPN declared the Pac-12’s best hope for the playoff had sunk off the coast of Coos Bay.Here’s a review of a few of the things everybody got wrong:•The SEC was overrated, and so was Florida State. It took a while to root this out because the SEC strategically schedules so that its teams are measured only against each other…

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