College football Championship Week highlights

Two things have been true of the College Football Playoff committee’s first eight years of selections.

First, the committee has almost certainly gotten the top four correct on every occasion. For any debates over Ohio State in 2014 or Alabama in 2017, the eventual results — a national championship for both — served as the final word in any argument.

But the second detail worth noting about the committee’s process is that, in the end, the decisions have almost entirely been easy. Even those mildly controversial choices actually represented the easiest possible solution for the committee. For all the griping and hand-wringing over every rankings release leading up to the final ballot, the stars have always aligned in the end.

That’s not the case this season.

On a championship weekend that seemed to have little chance of disrupting the status quo, TCU and USC threw wrenches into the works. With Ohio State and Alabama relaxed on their respective couches, feet up and a bowl of chips on their laps, they somehow were pulled from the playoff scrap heap, dusted off and found to be playoff-caliber teams after all.

On Friday, Utah demolished USC 47-24, hanging a second loss on the Trojans’ résumé — all because they had to play an extra game that Ohio State, Alabama and Tennessee did not.

On Saturday, Max Duggan‘s heroics fell six inches shy of a win, and TCU’s case is now in the committee’s hands, where it’ll judge the Horned Frogs’ one loss in overtime to Kansas State against Ohio State’s lone defeat vs. Michigan — a blowout from a week ago that now feels like ancient history.

USC has two losses — but it has lost to just one team, same as Ohio State. It lost in a blowout to a highly ranked conference rival, same as Ohio State. It has a Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterback, a cadre of elite receivers, a shaky defense and an impressive win over Notre Dame, same as Ohio State.

TCU took the L, but didn’t that frenetic comeback offer a reminder of the excitement the Frogs have given us all year? (And if it didn’t, just stare deeply into the Hypnotoad’s eyes.) A goal-line stand in overtime was the difference in TCU’s 31-28 loss to Kansas State, but the Horned Frogs remain this season’s Cinderella, even if the committee is now looking back at Alabama’s wicked stepmother in the latest version of that Twitter meme.

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Kansas State stuffs TCU at the goal line in overtime.

The committee will need to weigh putting in teams with more talent (Ohio State or Alabama)…