College Football Playoff Takeaways: Semifinals

Photo by Jeff Robinson from Getty Images

If you told a college football historian that the Miami Hurricanes would be going to the national championship game, they would say “Yeah. That makes sense.”

If you told them that they’d be playing the Indiana Hoosiers, I think they might have a heart attack.

But that’s where we are, and let’s figure out how we got there.

Miami defeats Ole Miss 31-27

First things first, massive respect to OIe Miss.

Making it this far, considering everything they’ve had to go through off the field with the Lane Kiffin disaster and possible poaching and so on and so forth, is extremely impressive, and they deserve a ton of respect.

They came extremely close to making the national championship game.

With that being said, there is no reason they should have been that close to the championship game.

Miami was by far the better team, and just continued to shoot themselves in the foot, whether it be from getting away from the run game while Mark Fletcher Jr. was averaging 6 yards per carry, strange play calls that kill drives, or 10 penalties for 74 yards.

They possessed the ball for almost three quarters, and Ole Miss was 2-10 on third down.

This should have been a blowout.

So credit to Mario Cristobal for avoiding a potentially disastrous loss, but if they want to reach the summit of college football again, they can not possibly play like that again.

Indiana defeats Oregon 56-22

One game was closer than it needed to be, because the winning team kept making mistakes.

This game was much more of a blowout than it needed to be, because the losing team kept making mistakes.

The first play of the game was a pick six for Indiana.

Three other touchdown drives for Indiana were a combined 26 yards.

The Hoosiers continuously forced Oregon into making mistakes, and continuously made them pay for it.

They showed no mercy, never took their foot off the gas, and looked like the best team in college football, much like they have all year.

That’s what champions do.

And again, we are talking about Indiana football!

Indiana!!!!

The school that had the most losses in college football history before this year, and had a whopping zero 10 win seasons before last year.

Their most recent 9 win season was 1967!

And Curt Cignetti has gotten them to the playoff, and to the national championship game as Big 10 champions, in his second year on the job.

We have never seen a turnaround like this.

Ever.