Tonight in Glendale, Ariz., the 2015 college football season will officially come to a close with the crowning of the second College Football Playoff champion.
Oklahoma will not be there, but the team that knocked the Sooners out of this year’s Playoff, Clemson, will be present along with Alabama, the only team from last season’s football Final Four to make it back for a second go-round in 2015.
When it came time for the seeding of the four teams that would advance as Playoff teams in the second season of the College Football Playoff format, there were some of the opinion that the top seed, Clemson and Michigan State, the three seed in this season’s championship pairings, would not be around for tonight’s final showdown. That was because Oklahoma and Alabama were considered the teams playing the best football coming into this year’s Playoff.
That is also why some around college football were delighted not to see Oklahoma get the No. 3 seed in the Playoff pairings, because that would have sent the Sooners to the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas, to face Alabama in one of the two New Year’s Eve national semifinal games.
It is hard to say if the Sooners might have had a stronger fan base present if they had been assigned to play in the Cotton Bowl, but I can assure you that wouldn’t really have mattered, because their fate might have been even worse against the Crimson Tide than it turned out against top-seeded Clemson.
The brutal truth is: Oklahoma was not able to run the ball against the gap-sound Clemson defense, even without arguably the Tigers best defender, Shaq Lawson, knocked out of the game after just two OU possessions. And worse, the Sooners could not stop the Clemson ground game that wound up torching the OU defensive front for 312 yards on the ground, all but 27 of that coming from two players, quarterback Deshaun Watson and running back Wayne Gallman. Pure and simple, that, plus two costly interceptions, sealed the Sooners fate.
Sooner fans won’t want to hear this, but given the strengths of the Alabama defense – the Crimson Tide lead the country in rushing defense; Clemson is 18th best in that department – would have been even more impenetrable than against the run than Clemson was. And on the other side of the ball, Alabama’s Heisman Trophy winner Derrick Henry, who led the nation in rushing yards this season, likely would have run over and through a Sooner run defense that did not even rank in the top 50 nationally this season.
Brutal truth No. 2 is: Oklahoma had a very successful turnaround season – a dramatic improvement based on wins and losses over the 8-5 team in 2014. Much of that is attributable to the grit and tireless, selfless energy of their never-say-die quarterback Baker Mayfield. The defense played better this season, as well, but probably appeared better than it was with its three biggest wins of the year coming against backup quarterbacks. That latter aspect was painfully exposed against a legitimate dual-threat quarterback who could artfully avoid most attempts by the Sooner defense to pressure the passer. Like it or not, Oklahoma was not the strongest team in this year’s Final Four field.
The fact that Oklahoma rebounded so strongly from the horrible loss to Texas and finished so strong it was able to capture the team’s ninth Big 12 championship under Bob Stoops and earn its way to the College Football Playoff, the first Big 12 team to make it that far under the new championship format, is worthy testament to an outstanding season.
As much as all of us who count ourselves among the Sooner Nation faithful would have liked nothing more than to have seen the Sooners playing for the national championship tonight, I believe it is safe and prudent to say that the two best teams in college football are rightfully in place to vie for this season’s national crown.
Only three other teams made it as far as Oklahoma did in the 2015 college football season, and that is something certainly worth celebrating.