With Alabama handling Cincinnati 27-6 and Georgia beating Michigan 34-11, college football has been bestowed with an all-SEC final. I'm tempted to quote Gomer Pyle, "Surprise, surprise, surprise," which entails both the 2021 reality and the self-fulfilling rigged design of the NCAA football playoff process. A few of my observations follow.
First of all, people who follow me know that I had the Bearcats at 150-1 to win the national title. Did I think they had a chance to really win the thing? Well, as I publicly stated, I thought they had about as much chance as my friend Tony and me wrangling Elizabeth Hurley into a threesome next weekend.
While about 70% of 2021 college football teams had 16 starters or more returning due to covid rules and regs, Cincinnati did not. Personally, I thought that the 2020 version of the Bearcats was at least a touchdown better than the 2021 version. The 2020 Cincinnati squad beat a 2020 UCF team that was also better than this year's Bearcats. Anyone who watched Tulsa versus Cincinnati this year had to expect that Alabama would be able to comfortably run against the Cincinnati front seven. The game played out as anticipated.
I don't want to diminish what Cincinnati accomplished this year. They played fabulously, and the coaching staff did a Grade A job of getting them prepped to play their best against their best opponents. As Nick Saban said post-game, Cincinnati was a mentally tough, disciplined, hard-nosed outfit that deserved to be in the playoff.
In the other semi-final, Michigan's linebackers and safeties spent much of the game too close to the line of scrimmage and too far from the perimeter. Georgia attacked the perimeter with easy first-down completions, and Michigan was always trailing the plays with terrible tackling angles. The Bulldogs anticipated Michigan's defensive priorities, and Georgia play-calling exploited those priorities.
Despite the SEC monopolizing the title game (cue up Gomer again), the conference appeared pretty raggedy. Nobody looked good except Alabama and Georgia. I kind of thought the SEC was down a notch this year, and that was likely the case despite the two high-profile heavyweights. The bowls shined a spotlight on the ordinariness of the rank-and-file SEC teams.
The title game line caught me by surprise, which rarely happens. I expected Alabama to be -2 or thereabouts. Instead, Georgia is -2 1/2 to -3. Now let me explain why this surprises me. Heading into the semifinals, the Tide ranged from +110 to +120 to win the title while Georgia was +130 to +140. I assumed this translated into Alabama as a title game favorite. I was wrong. Evidently, this disparity was due to the belief that Michigan was somewhat live as compared to Cincinnati. It was not due to Alabama being considered better than Georgia, despite the evidence from their first meeting.
Since I hadn't really perceived either underdog as live, I expected Alabama to be favored versus Georgia. The idea that Georgia was somehow more impressive than Alabama in the semis is alien to me. Alabama executed a sound game plan and, to use a wrestling term, laid on Cincinnati much of the game. They had control and saw no reason to take risks. That, to me, was as impressive as anything Georgia did versus Michigan.
Had the playoff field been expanded, the two long shots I would have had interest in would have been Utah and Wisconsin. The Utah/Ohio State game demonstrated why, despite all of their offensive firepower, Ohio State would likely have fared little better than Cincinnati or Michigan versus Alabama and Georgia. Ohio State's front seven never solved their run-stopping problems. If anything, the Buckeye defense looked worse against the run down the season stretch. Every good rush offense hurt them.
That's it for now. I'll comment on the bowls in general next week.
Bob Dietz
January 3, 2022
