The dawn of the 12-team College Football Playoff descends upon the cement mixer of a town known as South Bend this evening.
That’s where two in-state rivals who last met in 1991 will meet, with the seventh seeded Notre Dame Fighting Irish looking for their first meaningful gridiron victory since the days of Rocket Ismail and Dr. Lou Holtz himself.
While my only take on the state of Indiana is that it should be bulldozed into the icy depths of Lake Michigan for the sake of America’s mental health, I am excited to see the arrival of the expanded CFP nonetheless.
That’s because we’re getting four more games of amateur football and the bona fide shot at a genuine “People’s Champion” in 2024, with a team like the Boise State Broncos having a real shot at a title.
Not since the days of LaVell Edwards and the 1984 ‘Stormin’ Mormons’ of BYU have we seen a non-Power Four team had such a shot at a title, with Ashton Jeanty and the Broncos running their way into our cold, dead hearts.
The difference some 40 years later is that this year’s Boise State team won’t have to play a mid-tier bowl game in America’s Finest City then wait weeks on end to find out if they get to call themselves national champs, as the Cougars did way back in the Reagan hellscape of 1984.
Instead, Boise State gets a shot at an instant dopamine rush by taking on the likes of Penn State or SMU in the ‘Vrbo Fiesta Bowl’ (this year’s CFP quarterfinal location), before possibly playing Georgia, Indiana or Notre Dame after that.
Given James Franklin’s pant-shitting skills in big games and Notre Dame’s allergy to doing anything smart when the rubber meets the postseason road, there’s a puncher’s chance that Georgia and Boise State will collide in Miami Gardens in this year’s CFP semifinal, held on Jan. 9.
What embodies the holiday spirit and our nominal notions of good vibes and one-day egalitarianism more than seeing a school that’s been cast aside by the Greg Sankeys of the world, with the People’s Heisman Trophy winner (Ashton Jeanty) bowling through the Bulldogs inside the oversized pressure cooker that is South Florida come Jan. 9?
This holiday season, I’m choosing to think positively amid the brimming shit storm that awaits us in the new year by imagining a bunch of constipated middle-aged white men in SEC pullovers watching a bunch of two-star recruits wax Kirby Smart’s ass in front of millions of TV viewers.
That, my friends, is the true meaning of the spirit of Christmas, as a team of plucky underdogs from the backside of hell blaze a trail of gridiron mercy across the South that would make Tecumseh Sherman blush.