Each CFP semifinalist eyes long-awaited national title

Redemption. Retribution. Revenge.

Whichever of these R-words you revere most, they all relate as the College Football Playoff rolls into the reckoning that is this week’s semifinals — a quartet of stories that are wildly varied, but at their core essentially the same.

The long-awaited expanded playoff that began with a dozen teams is down to four. Glaringly absent from the remaining field are the teams that have dominated the CFP since its inception. Clemson and Georgia have been eliminated. Oregon, ranked No. 1 for much of the season, also has been sent home. Former champs Alabama and LSU, along with last year’s finalists Michigan and Washington, didn’t even make the field.

All of that has opened the doors to these final four programs, giving them a chance to reverse their longtime reputations — in some cases, very, very longtime — with the big gold magic eraser that is only two wins from their grasps.

Notre Dame versus Penn State in the Orange Bowl. Ohio State versus Texas in the Cotton Bowl. Two of these teams will move on and get a shot at easing their perpetual pain. The other two will enter another winter amid the familiar vicious cycle of ice cold doubt.

“I think that much of that storyline in these games will center around the coaches, and that’s fine. We are big boys, we can handle that,” said James Franklin, in his 11th season as Penn State’s head coach but in his first CFP. “But to me, the real story is the opportunity we all have to reward these great universities and the people who have supported us through thick and thin. To bring that championship feeling back to this town, that will make every single step to get there worth it.”

There have been so many steps. But for these four programs, it seems every stride with traction has been inevitably outnumbered and slowed by slips and trips on the turf of their most-despised rivals.

“The same guys are in the room as was there a month ago,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said late last week following his team’s revenge win over Oregon, a team it had lost to in October in Eugene. “Nothing that’s happened in the past or really the noise that’s [outside the] building has…