Two undefeated teams, Michigan and Washington, will battle for the college football championship, and there were two excellent semi-final games that went down to the last play. Moreover, the two teams in the finals were the #1 and #2 teams during the regular season, and the bookies think the teams are quite evenly matched.
So that’s all good.
Since the inception of the playoff system, there has been only one other occasion when an undefeated #1 team faced an undefeated #2 team in the finals. That was at the end of the 2018-2019 season, when #1 Alabama and #2 Clemson brought 14-0 records into the game. That one did not turn out to be a thriller. Clemson ran away with a 44-16 victory.
- Both finalists were undefeated in 2019-2020, but they were the #1 and #3 seeds.
- Both finalists were undefeated in the COVID year (2020-2021), but they were the #1 and #3 seeds, and Ohio State’s undefeated status was tainted by the fact that they only played five games before the conference championship! (More games were scheduled, but were cancelled because of positive COVID tests.)
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Neither Michigan nor Washington has ever made the final game in the playoff years. Each has made it to the semi-finals once.
- Michigan made the semis last year as the #2 seed, but the team then embarrassed itself by allowing TCU to score 51 points. As you probably remember, TCU went on to lose the final game 65-7.
- Washington made the semis in 2016-2017 as the #4 seed, but they were able to score only 7 points against Alabama.
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The final games have not been close in the past five years. The closest game was decided by 15 points, and the most lopsided was last year’s embarrassing 65-7 train wreck. Just prior to that period, the 2017-2018 game was an overtime thriller between Alabama and Georgia.