What Bowl Season Taught Us

First, Alabama and Clemson gave us a great National Championship game. No complaints there.

The semi final games, on the other hand? Ugh…

Speaking of those games, a few things that those results, and others, confirmed for me.

• Ohio State clearly just blew their shot. I’m not going to argue that they deserved to be in the playoff when they didn’t even win their division in the Big Ten. But, talent-wise, they were so much better than either Michigan State or Iowa, and the bowl results showed us that, IMHO. I’m still not convinced that loss to Michigan State was on the up and up. 😉
• I was all set to write about how overrated the Big 12 was, based on most of the top teams just getting creamed, and then Oregon blew a 31 point lead to TCU. Outside of that, however, there is some weakness there.
• On that note, has there ever been a team as good as Oregon with their starting QB, and alternatively as bad as Oregon without him? Fun conversation for the off season, how much did Vernon Adams health not only mess up Oregon’s season, but also any chance the PAC-12 had of getting a team into the playoffs? If he’s healthy all year, does Oregon get in? If he had not been healthy when they played Stanford, does Stanford get in?
• The SEC redeemed itself after flubbing up bowl season last year. Well, except Florida. I’m not surprised by that. The SEC obviously has a ton of really good teams, and had favorable matchups this year that they didn’t have last year. (see also, the second bullet about the Big 12. There were a few mismatches between SEC and Big 12 schools.)
• Houston handing Florida State a beat down was the one game that made me stand up and take notice. A nice win for Tom Herman, but it kind of reminded me of some other bowl games where a “marquee” program just doesn’t show up on a lower bowl game too. It happens every few years, at least.

What was your biggest take away from the bowl season?