College football crowned a new national champion Monday night, and thus the strangest and most tenuous season on record ended in a familiar place. With Alabama holding the trophy.
The Crimson Tide scored with remarkable ease to rout Ohio State 52-24 in a predictably one-sided game that was basically over at halftime.
College football has a problem. A freshness problem. A problem that exists because the system that decides a champion has created a monotonous spin cycle.
I love college football more than any other sport, and I worry about it becoming less appealing in the eyes of the general public because the College Football Playoff has morphed into Groundhog's Day.
Since its inception, the playoff has become an exclusive club of a few blue blood programs that maximize the sport's absence of parity.
The CFP is in its seventh year, which equates to 28 bids. Only 11 teams have participated so far. Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Oklahoma alone have accounted for 20 of the 28 spots.
No school outside of the Power Five or Notre Dame has scaled the wall. Cincinnati went 9-0 with a top-10 defense this season and was treated like an outsider by the selection committee.
The Pac-12 has not appeared in the CFP since 2016 and has fallen off the radar to such a degree that the conference almost feels like an afterthought within the power structure.