Ohio State players celebrate the Buckeyes' 42-20 win over Oregon in CFP National Championship on Monday, Jan. 12, 2015, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (Bob DeMay/Akron Beacon Journal/TNS)
The College Football Playoff committee received unending criticism throughout the season for the four teams it selected to be the best in the country. However, No. 4 Ohio State's 42-20 victory over No. 2 Oregon in Monday's national title game silences the critics and proves that the committee got it right in the end. College football fans got what they asked for.
It wasn't an easy road for the Buckeyes, who were down to their third quarterback and had to defeat the top two teams in the country before claiming the title.
Because Ohio State was the fourth seed, nobody expected it to make the run it did, let alone with a third-string quarterback leading the way for the final three games. OSU winning it all is clear evidence that the system not only works but is far superior to the BCS.
As with any selection system, there will always be gripes about why one school deserved to be in over the other, but the decision by the committee to put Ohio State in over TCU ended up being the right one.
If the BCS was still the method of deciding which two teams play for the national championship, Alabama and Florida State would have most likely duked it out for the college football crown, rather than sitting on their respective couches watching the final game after being trumped by Ohio State and Oregon.
Under the BCS system, Oregon and Ohio State would have played in the Rose Bowl because of conference affiliation. The "Granddaddy of them all" as Brent Musburger used to say, was the next best game (by many people's standards) to play in during that era, but it still didn't mean as much to a team as a national championship. Now the Rose Bowl is one of the New Years Six bowls eligible to host a semifinal game, and holds even more significance when a team becomes Rose Bowl champions and also gets a shot at a national title, like Oregon did this season.
The playoff made for a ratings bonanza for ESPN, which owns the rights to the semifinal and championship games through 2025 at a price of roughly $7.3 billion. That investment is undoubtedly paying dividends for the Disney-owned network, which received the highest overnight rating in the history of the network on championship Monday (18.5).
Switching to a playoff system doesn't just excite fans or bring in boatloads of cash for ESPN. This system has created college football's equivalent to the Super Bowl (Note: after the Super Bowl comes to Arizona in 2015, so too will the College Football Playoff in 2016). These games at the end of every football season bring a new kind of excitement to the sport, and fans are glued to their Twitter feeds and TV's every week leading up to the games, praying that their school squeaks into the playoff picture.
Hell, ESPN has already put out a top 25 for next year in anticipation of another thrilling season filled with debate and controversy. One thing is for sure, though: When it comes to the College Football Playoff, the chatter won't matter when the committee sits down and does its job right once more.
Reach the columnist at rclarke6@asu.edu or on Twitter @RClarkeASU
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