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Paul Finebaum labels national title blowout ‘an outlier,’ downplays concerns for expanded Playoff
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Paul Finebaum was just like most college football fans outside of Georgia as the College Football Playoff reached its conclusion Monday night.
With a 65-7 drubbing of TCU, the Bulldogs rolled to back-to-back national titles. While that was a show of dominance to cement Kirby Smart’s program as the budding dynasty in college football, the game itself left a lot to be desired.
Appearing on ESPN’s “Get Up” Tuesday morning, Finebaum was asked about the blowout and what it means for the future. With many fans trying to take shots at the committee for letting TCU in and others wondering if the blowout is a troubling sign for the expanded 12-team Playoff, Finebaum said he expects Monday’s game to be an outlier down the road.
He pointed to a pair of dramatic semifinals as evidence while saying he believes the expanded CFP will be the most exciting thing for the sport:
“I think it’s an outlier,” Finebaum said about Monday’s title game blowout. “We had two great semifinal games, we had a horrible — horrible doesn’t even begin to describe what we saw last night — it would’ve been worse last night if Georgia hadn’t missed an extra point at the end.
“The point is that the 12-team Playoff, I think, is going to be the most exciting thing we’ve seen in college football. So, everyone wants to blast TCU and blast the committee and dunk on poor Heather (Dinich). The bottom line is Alabama lost 2 games. If Alabama hadn’t lost to LSU, they would’ve been in the Playoff. It’s not the committee’s fault, it’s Alabama’s fault.”
We’ll have to wait until the 2023 season to find out if any team can topple the run that Georgia is on.
Paul is a lifelong fan and student of all things college football. He has been covering college football since 2017 and the B1G since 2018.