Bowl projections: Ohio State into College Football Playoff after USC falls as Georgia, Michigan, TCU clinch

We knew there would not be much drama entering Championship Week, at least as it pertained to the four teams that would ultimately participate in the College Football Playoff. It was simply a matter of which team would wind up in the No. 4 spot, USC or Ohio State.

Well, Utah beat USC for the second time this season, 47-24 in the 2022 Pac-12 Championship Game, to knock the Trojans out of playoff contention. In fact, USC will most likely be ranked behind Utah when the final CFP Rankings come out Sunday afternoon.

Ohio State will therefore back into the College Football Playoff for the third time in the last four seasons, most likely as the No. 4 seed. That will make the Big Ten just the second conference in CFP history to put two teams in a singular four-team field, joining the SEC.

The Buckeyes’ positioning only comes into some question because Kansas State handed TCU its first defeat of the season in the Big 12 Championship Game with the Jayhawks avenging their regular-season loss to the Horned Frogs in overtime.

I believe TCU will remain ahead of Ohio State in the CFP, but even if it does not, forget any notion of Alabama moving up along with Ohio State and supplanting TCU. That would be completely unwarranted. If TCU’s jerseys read “Oklahoma” or Alabama’s said “Ole Miss,” no one would even entertain this discussion point.

Filling out the top of the four-team field, Georgia locked up the first seed in the playoff and its first SEC Championship Game victory since 2017 in a rout of No. 14 LSU, and Michigan clinched the second seed by winning its second straight Big Ten Championship Game, this season over Purdue. 

College Football Playoff