The inaugural, ever-expanded College Football Playoff wraps up on what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 96th birthday on Monday.
While I’ll choose to remember Monday in the context of that milestone and not on whatever shit show goes down in D.C. that day, I’m also left to wonder how we got to this point exactly.
While the on-field portion of that sentence is easy enough to sum up, with Notre Dame and Ohio State surviving three CFP games apiece to reach Monday’s title game, the anecdotal angle is a bit harder to cover.
That’s because Ohio State (no THE required) went from blood-boiling anger over head coach Ryan Day’s fourth straight loss to Michigan in “The Game” to being 60 minutes away from the program’s first natty since Urban Meyer stroked out on the sidelines in 2014.
On the other sideline, certifiably cool head coach Marcus Freeman has the Fighting Irish the same amount of game time away from the Golden Domers’ first title since Dr. Lou was calling the shots in 1988.
Come Monday night, we’ll have a Certifiably Midwestern team atop the sport’s lexicon for the second year in a row, joining the Milk Man himself (Jim Harbaugh) and the Michigan Wolverines as champions from Flyover Country.
We got here as a net result of the lovable losers of the CFP getting their asses handed to them by the blood-hungry titans of industry, with plucky underdogs like SMU, Indiana, Boise State, Arizona State and … Oregon … all losing by the time the bracket reached the national semifinal.
What we’re left with as a nation is a team that lost to Northern Illinois (lol) and another that somehow sputtered its way through a 13-10 loss to Michigan at home (lol, part deux).
Regardless of how they got to Atlanta on the birthday of the city’s sacred son of the 20th century, both Notre Dame & Ohio State enter the city that Tecumseh Sherman did his best to burn to the ground with a shot at immortality.
While I’m not ready to break out the bubbly for either team (because both are among my least favorite teams in the nation), I’ll begrudgingly tip my ink to whichever head coach survives the month-long slog known as the CFP with a championship trophy in hand.
For now, lets sit back and enjoy the final 60 minutes of amateur football that we’ll get to enjoy before the nation’s only holiday celebrating the proletariat (Labor Day).
Regular Season: 89-45 Straight-up/65-64 ATS
CFP: 5-4 Straight-up/4-5 ATS
All Odds Provided By ESPN BET
No. 7 Notre Dame (14-1) vs. No. 8 Ohio State (13-2) — 4:30 p.m. Pacific time Monday (ESPN)
Spread: Ohio State -8
Our Pick: Notre Dame wins, 31-27
I’m going with Freeman’s horsemen of the defensive apocalypse to inflict all unholy hell upon Ohio State QB Will Howard on Monday. While the final score above would clear the pregame over/under of 45.5 with ease, I’m still expecting some great defensive play on both sides in the CFP finale.
When all’s said and done, I’m going with vibes over cold hard facts here, with Freeman’s dope ass Notre Dame lineup exacting just enough gridiron magic to extract the Irish’s first natty since the final year of the Reagan administration inside “Megatron’s Butthole” on Monday evening.