- [Host] It's January 1st, 2015.
We're in New Orleans at the Superdome.
Urban Meyer's number four Ohio State Buckeyes
are trying to close out a massive upset
against Nick Saban's number one Alabama Crimson Tide
in the Sugar Bowl.
The Buckeyes have scored 28 unanswered points
to shock the best team and the best coach
in college football.
We should also mention that this
isn't just a regular bowl game.
This is the semifinal
of the inaugural college football playoff.
For the first time in the sport's history,
an undisputed champion will be determined
by more than one postseason game.
This sport is trying to break with a century
of weird and wonderfully corrupt tradition.
But there's way more than even
a national title at stake here.
Ohio State has a chance
to bring the sport of college football
back from the brink of total southern dominance.
How we got to such a pivotal moment
for college football both on and off the field
deserves a rewind.
(pensive music)
See that number one and number four ranking?
It took over 100 years, literally,
but college football finally embraced a postseason bracket,
even though it's only four teams.
It's impossible to explain why this sport
finally gave in to this format
without mentioning SEC fatigue.
Created in 1998,
the BCS was a constantly revised aggregate ranking system
designed to pair the two best teams in the nation
in an undisputed national title game.
All of this was designed to prevent
the older Bowl Alliance system,
and before that it was just bowls,
from naming multiple national champions in a single season.
And it sucked.
The BCS was widely loathed,
by conferences, by media, and fans alike.
LSU coach Les Miles famously admitted
that he used media appearances
to manipulate human poll voters
in an effort to game the BCS system.
And the BCS didn't even do the one job
it was actually created for.
In 2004, LSU won the BCS,
but USC was voted number one in the AP poll.
To this day, both schools claim championships
from that season.
You literally had one job, you stupid computer.
As the BCS aggravated everyone,
college football became dominated by a single region,
and almost exclusively by one conference.
Ohio State won the BCS in 2003,
then the SEC won eight out of the next eleven titles.
The other three were won by warm weather teams,
Florida State, Texas, and USC.
The Big Ten was shut out completely.
Ohio State was blown out
by their current head coach Urban Meyer
when he was at Florida in the 2007 BCS Championship,
and again by LSU in 2008.
The only other Midwest team to appear in the title game
was Notre Dame, who got pulverized by Alabama.
While Florida and Bama and LSU traded title runs,
legacy programs like Michigan, Penn State and the Buckeyes
floundered in the postseason,
running outdated schemes and with fewer superstar players.
Recruiting, college football's second season,
had become the priority in the south
and specifically in the SEC,
while the Big Ten lagged behind.
The BCS death knell came in 2012
when the format paired Alabama and LSU,
two teams from the same division of the same conference
who had already played a terrible
9-6 all-field-goals game that season.
SEC!
SEC.
SEC...
Yes, just...
Yeah, let's stop doing that.
Not only did the LSU-Bama rematch infuriate
pretty much every non-southern football fan in America,
the actual game was unwatchable.
Bama crushed the Tigers in New Orleans so bad
that LSU didn't even cross the 50-yard line on offense
until the fourth quarter.
Among those seething publicly
was Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney,
who told the AP, "I don't have a lot of regard for Bama."
The games poor ratings and SEC exclusivity
helped push through a four-team playoff format,
announced just 10 months later in 2012.
It's a safe bet Delaney has some regard for this Bama team
across the sideline from his conference champions.
It's Nick Saban's eighth season as Bama's head coach,
and they are a ruthless machine.
His Alabama program has only lost four games
to non-SEC opponents,
and two of those came in his first season,
a shaky rebuild that saw the Tide finish 7-6
and drop a home game to lowly Louisiana-Monroe.
In their previous five seasons, Bama has won 60 games
and three of the final five BCS national titles.
They've dominated national recruiting rankings
and cemented control of the Southeastern Conference.
This Bama team is just more of that, more of the same.
Saban's Alabama has already produced 41 NFL draft picks
and five consecutive number one-rated
signing classes in a row.
It's built a 2014 two-deep
that boasts 36 players rated four stars or higher.
That includes five-star defensive lineman A'Shawn Robinson,
Jonathan Allen and Da'Shawn Hand, tight end O.J. Howard,
running backs T.J. Yeldon and Derrick Henry,
and receiver Amari Cooper,
who finished third in Heisman voting.
After a six-point upset loss at Ole Miss in October,
the most talented roster in college football
beat five ranked SEC teams in a row
to clinch the number one seed in this inaugural playoff.
That's why right here the question
is how long can a peak like this last?
Could this be the moment that Saban
finally loses when it matters most?
Alabama isn't perfect,
but when it counts the most, they have been.
So how do you beat a program
that's unbeatable when they have to be?
Ohio State lured Meyer out of semi-retirement
after the Jim Tressel era
couldn't keep pace with the rising powers down south
and imploded in controversy.
The two-time national champion and Ohio native
was the author of some of that OSU postseason misery
when he was head coach of Florida.
Now Meyer was tasked with recruiting and developing
like a SEC program in the Big Ten.
He also had significant postseason history with Saban,
with the two knocking each other out
of national title contention
in the 2008 and '09 SEC Championship games, respectively.
Remember crying Tebow?
Meyer's arrival in Columbus wasn't just a homecoming,
it was a moment of "can't beat 'em, join 'em."
He rebuilt The Ohio State like an SEC program
so that it could beat SEC programs.
The Buckeyes changed schemes on the field
but also started recruiting better nationally,
not just in Ohio and the Midwest.
Highly sought-after players like Joey Bosa from Florida,
J.T. Barrett from Texas, and Vonn Bell from Georgia
came north or east.
By year three, Ohio State had a team
that could at least pass the eye test
to see if they belonged on a field with Alabama,
but they didn't have any of the depth or the consistency
of that reigning monster.
If you're not an Ohio State fan
or just one of those random folks
tuning in for the first time this season
just to watch the new college football playoff,
you might be wondering just who the hell
that quarterback is leading this wild upset,
'cause it ain't starter Braxton Miller.
No sir, that sassy kaiju flattening Bama's feared defense
is Cardale Jones, the Buckeye's third-string quarterback
entering the 2014 season.
Jones is playing in place of starter J.T. Barrett,
who replaced Miller when he re-injured
his surgically repaired shoulder in fall camp.
Despite the QB mess,
Ohio State still has running back Ezekiel Elliot,
receivers Devin Smith and Michael Thomas,
and the play calling of a young offensive coordinator
named Tom Herman.
After a shaky loss at home in Week 2 to Virginia Tech,
the offense found its stride, averaging 47 points a game.
Barrett responded wonderfully,
throwing for over 2,800 yards and 34 touchdowns
while rushing for almost 1,000 yards and 11 more touchdowns.
But Barrett broke his ankle
on a running play against Michigan,
at the time with Ohio State leading by just a touchdown.
Suddenly the redshirt sophomore Jones
would see his first significant playing time
in one of the biggest rivalry games in all of sports.
The Jones-led Buckeyes closed out the Wolverines 42-28,
and a week later went on to obliterate number 11 Wisconsin
in the Big Ten Championship game 59-nothing.
That's a pretty ridiculous final score
when you consider that Ohio State
led 45-nothing in the third quarter
and that Meyer elected to leave his starters in.
Why?
Because Urban needed to run up the score
to convince the brand-new
college football playoff selection committee
that the then-number five-ranked Buckeyes
deserved to make the four-team bracket.
The stunt worked.
Ohio State looked formidable enough,
even with a third-string quarterback,
and the Horned Frogs got bumped.
The new playoff committee's selection process
was messy, controversial, and drew a ton of attention,
not unlike the old BCS ranking system.
Now it's the first day
of the first-ever postseason bracket tournament
in this sport's history,
and the Buckeyes aren't really supposed to be here.
Earlier, number two Oregon
blew out number three Florida State in the Rose Bowl,
and had Bama done the same,
detractors and college football purists
would start to complain that the playoff
was an unnecessary money grab
instead of a highly logical money grab.
The newly formed playoff is looking for justification,
proof that four teams, not two,
are deserving of an equal shot at the national championship
and that that these are the right four.
Nothing would certify this format better
than a close-scoring game between the prohibitive favorite
and the controversial four-seed.
Now, in just his second game as a starter
and against the best defense in the NCAA,
Jones has rallied the Buckeyes to a 34-28 lead,
including this touchdown pass.
- [Announcer] And he's got Devin Smith. Touchdown.
- [Host] Except things have cooled.
See this 41-yard pick-six by the Buckeyes' Steve Miller?
Normally that's a backbreaker, a true momentum play.
But Alabama immediately composed itself
and answered with an 84-yard drive
ending with a Blake Sims touchdown.
Bama has fought back and Ohio State hasn't scored
in almost 15 minutes.
Ohio State had negative-seven yards and no first downs
on two drives in the fourth quarter
before Jones scrambled for a one-yard first-down conversion
on the play before,
as Ohio State desperately tries to bleed the clock.
The SEC seems poised to dominate this new playoff era,
just like they did in the BCS.
But the Buckeyes didn't hire Meyer
just to get to this stage.
They want to shine in these moments
and to prove that the Big Ten
is still a national powerhouse in football
that can best even the Saban system.
Ohio State and the Big Ten need to show
that it could beat the best at their own game.
The playoff needs to prove
it isn't just a billion-dollar excuse
for the same programs to go chalk.
More than anything else,
it's possible everyone in the nation just needs to see
Alabama, Nick Saban, and the Southeastern Conference
lose when it counts the most.
For college football to retain
its manic, corrupt, and uniquely American eccentricity,
it takes an entire nation of fans
believing that their conference has a chance.
So, with that chance to define a sports postseason
and win back college football for the Midwest,
welcome to a moment in history.
- [Announcer] Ezekiel Elliott.
And he's got an opening! Elliott!
Off to the races! Can they catch him?
No, they can't! Touchdown!