Should have been Alabama-Georgia playing in that championship game...
If only the refs in the Illinois-Michigan game would have officiated more honestly... Here's the breakdown (read the whole thing). Blown calls matter:
We can’t turn back time and say the Illini would’ve stopped Michigan and won the game had a penalty had been called, but the odds definitely would’ve been against the Wolverines.
Instead they remained unbeaten, and after beating Ohio State in “The Game,” they rose to No. 2 in the CFP rankings and stayed there after finishing off Purdue in the Big Ten championship game.
Ohio State dropped to No. 5 after its loss to Michigan but made the playoff as the No. 4 seed when USC lost in the Pac-12 title game, edging out Alabama for the final spot.
Would a one-loss Michigan team still have made the playoff? No doubt. But they would’ve dropped behind TCU in the rankings after a loss at home to the unranked Illini.
And losing to a one-loss Michigan team, instead of an unbeaten one, might have put Ohio State behind Alabama heading into the final CFP ranking. After TCU lost to Kansas State in the Big 12 title game, the final four could’ve been Georgia, Michigan, Alabama and TCU in that order.
Michigan still would have been Big Ten champion. Alabama, which suffered last-minute road losses to ranked Tennessee and LSU, was the second-best team in the nation’s best conference and deserving of the No. 3 seed. TCU played a weaker schedule than both and lost in its title game, so No. 4 would’ve been appropriate.
Suppose then that Georgia trounced TCU in a semifinal instead of the title game, while Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh “Harbaughed” his way to a loss to Alabama in the other semi. We would’ve had another all-SEC title game between the Bulldogs and Crimson Tide.
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