Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I think our team of editors really nailed it with their Sportsperson of the Year selection.

In today’s SI:AM:

🤸‍♀️ Sportsperson of the Year
⭕ Ohio State rolls
✅ Week 18 NFL picks

More games doesn’t mean more drama

If you’re a college football fan, I really hope you carved out time on your New Year’s Day to watch the Peach Bowl playoff quarterfinal between the Texas Longhorns and Arizona State Sun Devils. If you didn’t, you missed the only competitive game we’ve seen in this inaugural expanded playoff.

Texas and Arizona State played a wild game that saw the Sun Devils come back from a 24–8 deficit in the fourth quarter before the Longhorns prevailed in double overtime. The game had everything: a star running back (ASU’s Cam Skattebo, who was vomiting on the sideline earlier in the game) who put his team on his back, a pivotal trick play (a touchdown pass by Skattebo to start the comeback), agonizing missed field goal attempts (by Texas’s Bert Auburn) and a back-and-forth overtime.

It was an instant classic. It was also, unfortunately, a distinct outlier among playoff games this season. Of the seven playoff games played thus far, Texas–ASU was the only one-possession game. The average point differential in those seven games is more than two touchdowns: 17.4 points. The only other game decided by less than two touchdowns was the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s 27–17 win over the Indiana Hoosiers in which Notre Dame led 27–3 until Indiana scored twice in the final two minutes to make the game look a lot closer than it actually was.

This isn’t the kind of debut that the organizers of the College Football Playoff wanted in the tournament’s first year with 12 teams, but we should have seen it coming. On the whole, the playoff games have always stunk. There have now been 37 CFP games since the BCS was abolished before the 2014 season. The average margin of victory has been 18.4 points. Only 10 of those games have been decided by seven points or fewer, while 16 of them have been decided by at least 20 points. There hasn’t been a championship game decided by less than two touchdowns since 2018.

Blowouts are an unavoidable reality in college football, though. Of the 863 games played during the regular season, 355 of them (41.1%) were decided by at least 20 points, while 295 (34.2%) were one-possession games. Mismatches are bound to happen in the college game, and not just when power-conference teams schedule tuneup games against East Podunk State. The NFL can implement rules and policies to promote parity, like the salary cap and schedules based on a team’s previous season record—not to mention the much more consistent talent level of professional players—and that results in far fewer blowouts. There have been roughly one-third as many 20-point blowouts in the NFL this season (50) as there have been one-possession games (143, more than half of the 272 games played through 17 weeks). College football is far more decentralized and less regulated than the NFL. If Ohio State wants to spend $20 million on its football roster, there’s nothing to stop the Buckeyes from doing it (for now).

But even if some of the games have been non-competitive, the 12-team playoff has already proven itself to be a success. The expanded field kept more teams in the title hunt later in the season and added extra intrigue to some late-season upsets that knocked contenders out of the running. If you still find yourself asking whether the 12-team expansion was worthwhile, look no further than the Peach Bowl. Even at 11–2, Arizona State never would have been considered for inclusion in the previous four-team playoff format. But winning the Big 12 earned the Sun Devils that conference’s automatic berth, and even in defeat, the game against Texas validated ASU as an elite team deserving of a playoff shot. If the goal of expanding the playoff was to give more teams an opportunity to prove themselves as worthy contenders, then the new format has been a success. But the lopsided blowouts are an inevitable side effect.

Biles Sportsperson of the Year
Shaniqwa Jarvis

The best of Sports Illustrated

The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Lonzo Ball’s first dunk in more than three years.
4. TreVeyon Henderson’s 66-yard touchdown run.
3. Kyrie Irving’s nasty ballhandling that left Dillon Brooks on the floor.
2. Cam Skattebo’s 42-yard passing touchdown.
1. Faith Masonius’s improbable buzzer beater for Seton Hall while facing away from the basket.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | College Football Playoff Blowouts Are Nothing New.