Rozner: Polarizing Florida State headlines college playoff

It feels like decades since New Year's Day meant this much to college football.

True or not, this will be one huge day for the first College Football Playoff.

It says here that they ought to go to 12 teams - with four getting a bye in the first round - but we'll take what we can get and it's great to have meaningful games again.

As for the four that got in, well, it's certainly an imperfect system and regardless of the results, no one has yet made a convincing argument that Ohio State belongs in the Final Four over TCU or Baylor.

It will be fascinating to watch the games play out on ESPN as Alabama (1) is a 9-point favorite over Ohio State (4) in the Sugar Bowl (7:30 p.m.), and Oregon (2) is an 8-point favorite over Florida State (3) in the Rose Bowl (4 p.m.).

Baylor is a field-goal favorite over Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl (11:30 a.m.), and as a 3-point favorite TCU destroyed Ole Miss on Wednesday afternoon in the Peach Bowl.

TCU obviously wanted to make a statement Wednesday and Baylor might be intending the same.

Ohio State has the most to prove as the best of a terrible Big Ten Conference, and the huge victory over Wisconsin impressed only the committee and virtually no one else.

That earned the Buckeyes the right to face Alabama, which only got better as the season wore on - and on paper this doesn't appear to be much of a game.

Without question the most interesting team is Florida State, which won eight games by less than a touchdown and wasn't terribly impressive even as the Seminoles went undefeated while defending their national title.

They flirted with trouble on and off the field all season and believe they've been disrespected from start to finish.

They'll face an Oregon team that covered its last eight games, winning by an average of 26. No one in the country can match Oregon's speed, but Florida State might be one of the few that can hold its own.

Oregon also lost All-America cornerback Ifo Ekpre-Olomu two weeks ago and that gives the Seminoles just one more reason to think they can stay in this game.

It's really easy to dislike Jameis Winston and the Seminoles in general, especially coach Jimbo Fisher, who walks and talks like a man without a care in the world, insisting every arrest and headline is pure fiction.

His day of reckoning is coming, but it's not any time soon as Fisher just collected his second contract extension in as many years, this time for eight years and reportedly $5 million a season.

FSU has become the most polarizing program in the country and Winston has become one of the most disliked players over the last year as he has dodged the authorities despite one troubled incident after another.

The 29-game winning streak has taken a back seat to Fisher's defense of Winston and the FSU program, and the Seminoles have turned their bad behavior and the ensuing bad publicity into an us-against-the-world mentality.

The result has been some ugly victories, but victories nonetheless, and FSU is in a position to go back-to-back undefeated with back-to-back national titles.

Winston is at the center of it all, both on and off the field, and the fact that he's still eligible to play - in and of itself - is a huge victory for FSU. He has, at most, two games left in his college career and Winston will be trying to stick it to the critics and improve his draft position at the same time.

If nothing else, FSU's spot in the playoff gives those without a rooting interest a reason to watch, mostly hoping that the Seminoles' season goes up in flames.

So there you have it, two huge underdogs and one serious villain, an interesting mix that would have only been better if there were more teams involved.

Four teams is simply not enough and in the years to come you can expect it to expand to at least six and hopefully eight or 12, but it's still a substantial upgrade from the BCS and it has created more excitement and interest in one year than the BCS did in 16.

Happy New Year, indeed.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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