Clemson football players will receive nice Sugar Bowl gifts

Defending national champion Clemson got the No. 1 seed.

Give me excellence over access any day - even if that makes it hard for the general public and those of us in immersed in the college football world to define.

- No. 4 Alabama (11-1) vs. No. 7 Auburn, No. 3 Georgia vs. No. 6 Wisconsin (12-1): Large bruises. No. 8 USC, No. 2 Oklahoma vs. It would fill airwaves, email inboxes, chats. No. 15), it could play into the committees discussion on where to rank them, if they prefer to include a third at-large team.

I believe that if Alabama and Ohio State played on a neutral field the Tide would roll all over the Buckeyes, so I have no issue saying that Alabama is one of the four best teams in the country and deserves to play for a national championship. We might have discussed even whether Penn State's omission constituted continuing bias from its early-decade scandal.

Bill Connelly of SBNation's 130-team S&P+ ranked Ohio State at No. 1. The next three teams will be at-large selections. "We watched and we saw Ohio State strengthen their résumé this week with a win over Wisconsin, with a Big Ten championship, but it wasn't enough in the eyes of the selection committee to overtake Alabama for that fourth and final spot".

Another all-SEC championship game could be on the horizon, and for the second straight year the value of a conference championship was diminished. Everyone just values them to different degrees.

Though some of the criteria were championships won - Alabama didn't win its conference or division while Ohio State and USC did and Wisconsin won its division title - strength of schedule - Alabama had a worse strength of schedule rankings than Ohio State, Wisconsin and USC - none of that was apparently considered. An eight-team playoff format adds to the chaos, while a the same time, quiets debates like this season's Ohio State-Alabama scenario.

Here's some homework: The selection committees have chosen 16 teams in four years for the playoff. It doesn't. Yet, with automatic bids for conference champions, it would have received one. The eight-team bracket allows for more teams to have a shot at the crown while still maintaining the importance of the regular season, one of the main things that makes college football great. Everyone still talks about conference championships.

It's time to give more deserving teams a shot at the championship and embrace the madness of college football.

Not finished yet when finishing would have helped, Edsall supplied a hashtag with this nugget: #AllAboutTheMoney.

"In this particular case, as we looked at Alabama's full body of work over the course of the season, we favored that body of work over Ohio State", Hocutt said. The state of Alabama, the nation's 24th-most populous, has a population of 4.9 million. Ohio State got clobbered at Iowa by 30.

It's always puzzling when an exercise that's #AllAboutTheMoney chooses the lesser amount of money.

Tide or Buckeyes was the toughest call for the committee in the four-year history of the playoff. Why not let the best teams in these conferences actually have a chance to play to find out?

The one-loss Tide secured the last spot in the playoff after failing to reach its conference championship, while the two-loss Buckeyes won the Big Ten Championship but fell outside the prestigious four spots.