The College Football Playoff - and, Ha ha.

See, here is the thing.  Year after year, those of us  in the PAC 12 and Big 10 are subject to the comments that the SEC and Florida schools are soooo much better than we are.  The SEC has "won" the college football playoff year after year, usually playing another SEC or Florida team.  The BIG 10 and PAC 10 sitting on the outside - not due to anything except East Coast media expectations.
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Now, I get it.  There are a couple of big excuses reasons.
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The first is timing.  The schools in the SEC and ACC (which Florida State and Miami belong to) play on East Coast Schedules.  Those in the far west play late afternoon (if they play "early") or well in the evening - since the first games in the desert schools have to be played at night.  A 7:00 PM start in the Arizona desert is a 10:00PM start on the east coast.  The writers don't watch those games and the newspapers don't report on them.  So there is a void unless a writer tries to find out information (and football commentators are, in the main, not terribly motivated to find out about other teams).
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The second reason is that many media folks are from those conferences.  I am not saying that 2nd string Bible-thumping washed up quarterback can't get a job reporting news from Syria, but it is easier to pull in millions of dollars telling people how great football in the Sunshine state is.  Communications Majors from the PAC 12, Wisconsin and Northwestern go into entertainment or news media - as a rule (or porn, but that is mainly a USC thing).  So there is a natural bias of college football experts to sheer on the SEC and ACC.  And it is self-reinforcing.  If they tell people year after year, that the SEC is the best conference, people start to believe it (see "Obamacare is a failure").
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The exception to this rule is the great folks at ESPN's College Game Day, but that occurs before the football day starts and their comments are forgotten in the drunken revelry of Saturdays.
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So the football playoffs happened yesterday.  And with playoffs, they invited 4 teams.  In this, they decided to invite Oregon and Ohio State University (Pac 12 and BIG 10 respectively).
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Oregon played the defending "National Champions", and winners of 29 in a row (although that 29 game win streak doesn't include any games against a Pac12 or Big 10 team).  Their non-conference foes (that is teams that aren't in their little conference) in those 2 years were made up of the titans Pittsburgh, Nevada, Bethun-Cookman, and The Citadel.
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The result of the game between the undefeated national champions and their first PAC 12 or Big 10 opponent since 2006? Oregon 59;Florida State 20.  Teams that played Oregon closer than that this year... Michigan State (Big 10), and every PAC 12 conference team.
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Ohio State was the fourth team selected for the Bowl Playoff, and many people argued that honor should go to TCU or Baylor.  Well, Baylor was beaten by the 3rd place finisher in the BIG 10, so enough of that.  Ohio State got top ranked Alabama.  And the might Elephants of Alabama did give the 3rd string quarterback of Ohio State quite a fight before losing Ohio State 42;Alabama 35.
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Of course, in 11 days, our happy home might not be so happy as I cheer on the Mighty Ducks, and I am not sure who my Cheesehead husband will be rooting on yet.  But either way, that sound you will hear will be the millions of ACC and SEC fans, fingers firmly in ears - going "la la la..."
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He even has the "SEC-Swoop"

Oh yes, one last thing that made yesterday a happy trifecta in the Mitchell/Neppl household.
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Wisconsin (Big 10) played Auburn (another SEC team) yesterday in the "Outback Steakhouse Bowl".