Fortuna Files: The finalists are set. What does it mean?
Plus, a look at what happened to Oregon, some calendar curiosities and a lookback at the wild coaching carousel of 2021-22.
It will be an All-Adidas championship game. The three stripes never had a College Football Playoff team till Washington made it in 2023. Now they have Miami and Indiana on the sport’s biggest stage, after signing Tennessee and Penn State for next year, too.
It really is a new era, huh?
1. I felt like I was on a bit of an island with this Indiana team coming in to Friday night. I saw little path to victory for Oregon. I thought it would take the game of Dante Moore’s life. I thought it would take some uncharacteristic mistakes from the Hoosiers, who actually had some of those in their first meeting against the Ducks ... and still won by 10 on the road. But so many folks I respect were picking Oregon that I started to wonder if I was crazy.
2. And yet, I never saw this coming. 56-22? Over Oregon? A 34-point win over the Ducks, eight days after a 35-point win over Alabama?
3. That’s a combined score of 94-25 in two Playoff games — a point differential of 69. Let’s isolate these for a second, away from the upcoming national title game. Of Nick Saban’s six national titles at Alabama, three came in the CFP, where you had to win two postseason games. The aggregate scores of those four Tide CFP title runs were: 83-40 (43 point differential), 50-29 (21 points), 83-38 (45 points).
4. Let’s average out Indiana’s margin of victory (34.5) and compare it to Bama’s three BCS title triumphs under Saban: a 16-point win, 21-point win and 28-point win.
5. The two-biggest four-team CFP runs in terms of point differential actually belong to 2018 Clemson (74-19 aggregate/59-point difference) and 2019 LSU (105-53/52-point difference).
6. Ohio State last year won its four CFP games by 25, 20, 14 and 11 points, respectively. That four-game total of 70 felt like a lot more at the time, didn’t it? Probably because the Buckeyes jumped up 34-0 on Oregon and 31-7 on Notre Dame, before both teams finished respectably. But I digress …
