The Situational: Crownless Kings

It's a sneaky question because we've already had a Fiesta Bowl this year. You might even remember it - Ohio State and its dozen eventual NFL draft picks made easy work of Notre Dame. Normally that would be it.

Except New Year's Eve will feature a second 2016 Fiesta Bowl. Perhaps you've already heard - by the time the ball in Times Square drops the Buckeyes will have appeared in the same bowl game twice inside of a calendar year. College football hasn't absorbed a controversy this hot this since the 2015 Cotton Bowls, which were both won and lost by Michigan State.

Ohio State has a chance to win the 2016 Fiesta Bowl twice.

— Andrew Lind (@AndrewMLind) December 4, 2016

Ohio State can bookend the 2016 calendar year with wins in Glendale, while Clemson can nearly do the same with losses (the Tigers lost on the same field to Alabama 10 days later when the national title game - not a Fiesta Bowl - was played). But this doesn't help us answer the original question.

The Buckeyes won the BattleFrog Fiesta Bowl. They're now preparing to win the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl, which is a superior Fiesta Bowl because 1) it comes with coveted Won Not Done scenarios that were lacking New Year's Day and 2) PlayStation > BattleFrog by a significant margin. PlayStation has kept me glued to my couch over several productive years of my life, while BattleFrog appears to be a voluntary exercise program that costs money. The second Fiesta Bowl of 2016 is an overwhelming upgrade.

So the Buckeyes will enter Glendale not only looking to advance to their second College Football Playoff championship game, not only trying to defend their 2016 Fiesta Bowl title, not only playing their second-straight 3rd-ranked team, not only attempting to beat a fourth team ranked in the current top eight - but should they prevail they'll make the answer to that question as uncomplicated as possible.

It's Final Four time! Let's get Situational -

The Surprise

Who was the surprise team of 2016? The Big Lead came up with ten worthy candidates:

It's true inspiration. The stuff Big Ten Coach of the Year awards are made of, really.

EMU won as many games this season as it did the previous four combined. Colorado won the Pac 12 South outright and Penn State won the B1G East via tiebreaker - nobody expected either to happen. Old Dominion restarted its football program in 2009 and has only had winning seasons since then, minus last year. It should not be on this list. The surprise was last season.

Everyone else: Congratulations! You sucked less than everybody expected.

It's nice to see 40% of this list (!) come from the SEC, which has quickly become college football's home for scrappy upstart programs dreaming of an 8-win season. Southern Cal lost by 46 to Alabama and stayed unranked until November, before reverting back into traditionally competent/violent Southern Cal. Not sure which part was the bigger surprise, but it counts.

There's one surprise team that didn't make this list. It replaced 16 starters and has 44 freshmen to go with just six seniors.

The five finalists for the @TheFWAA Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year
P.J. Fleck
James Franklin
Mike MacIntyre
Chris Petersen
Nick Saban

— Football Foundation (@NFFNetwork) December 6, 2016

Urban Meyer is not on that list. He coaches at Ohio State, where there are only bad surprises.

When the Buckeyes visited Oklahoma in September a sizable chunk of the travel roster was participating in its first road game ever. The home team that evening turned out to have two Heisman candidates on it. They got their doors blown off by a bunch of youthful teens.

The Buckeyes went 11-1 against that schedule and made the CFP despite being the youngest team in college football. Conversely, EMU and Colorado were two of the most experienced teams in college football this season - perhaps their turnarounds should have been less surprising.

If Ohio State getting back to the Playoff with this kind of youth and inexperience isn't surprising, then we need to come up with a better word for what it did. Ruthless, maybe. Scary. Scary works.

The False Equivalence

Michigan was one of the best teams in college football this year by any objective measure. It defeated the eventual Big Ten champions by 39 points and the Pac-12 runners-up by 17. The game it lost in Columbus was a classic.

Ohio State won the B1G East with Penn State but by virtue of tiebreaker could not play for its conference championship. While the Buckeyes were safely in the CFP rankings by virtue of Unimpeachable Resumé, their inclusion - and Michigan's candidacy for a CFP slot down to the final weekend - created some hysteria, primarily from the South with claims of hypocrisy from objecting to the 2011 BCS pairing of an Alabama and LSU rematch.

If you recall 2011 (and you can't, because you are an Ohio State fan and you've expunged everything that occurred during that terrible year prior to Urban Meyer's hiring from your memory stores) LSU and Alabama played The Game of the Century in Tuscaloosa, which was won by LSU.

There are people among us, on this earth, breathing our oxygen, who think these two scenarios are the same.

Alabama losing to LSU at home in November and then being allowed to play for the title over other conference champions and candidates (most notably, one-loss Oklahoma State) was mostly unfair to LSU, which was forced to beat a rival twice. 

Winning your division and conference title game held far more importance when there were only two slots available and five power conferences. As it turns out, the Big Ten only got one CFP slot anyway. Suggesting it deserved two was a reasonable position.

But the idea that Ohio State getting into the CFP - and Michigan being strongly considered for it - are anything like Alabama being handed a revenge game and a BCS title shot five years ago after fumbling destiny in its own stadium is naive. Both cases involved college football. There, that's what they had in common.

The Bourbon

There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there can be more than one worthy choice.

@ramzy who would make your final four for bourbon rankings

— Alex Schrapps (@alexschrapps) December 6, 2016

It's an important question and fortunately there is a Situational Bourbon Playoff Committee in place to decide this - it consists of me and Barry Alvarez. Me, because this is my column and Barry because he's just required to be a part of every committee, always.

Your 2016 Situational Bourbon Playoff bracket.

The rules are shrouded in mystery but we've decided to limit Who's In to bourbons that actually exist, i.e. you can walk into any reputable liquor store where you live and have a good chance of finding them on the shelf. So apologies to the Pappys, Wellers and limited release/special edition bourbons that are bought exclusively through back channels or off wait-lists - you didn't make it. Ghost bourbons aren't welcome this year.

Bourbons that made the 2016 SBP are Old Fitzerald 80-proof, Redemption High-Rye, Larceny and Four Roses Small Batch. The two on the left in the image to the right are wheated bourbons; the two to the right contain more rye. All of them won their respective conferences and had signature wins.

Fitz is the king of the first shelf, cheap and easy and so fundamentally sound it's been known to embarrass more expensive and "reputable" bourbons. Redemption does everything well enough and the copious amount of rye in this edition gives it a bouquet your nose can easily pick up without having to put your face in the glass. Rye has been known to do that. You can smell it when the bottle is still in the bartender's hands.

Larceny is the sweetest bourbon in the bracket, if you're into liquid desserts. Four Roses Small Batch is caramel up front, gasoline (again, this is a rye thing) in the back. They all have far more strength than weakness and most importantly, they can be easily found in the wild.

I get asked a lot which bourbons should I keep in my bar? This is the simplest answer I can provide for 2016. Start your library with Playoff bourbon. It shouldn't cost you more than $120.

The Playoff

First, appreciate Marshawn Lynch's NFL opus:

That play is among the NFL's greatest moments. If you disagree you're wrong.

It was this play that served as the basis for the dubbed BBC Iguana Cheating Death Video mashup that was originally in this space. As you can see, it's no longer here. This section of The Situational was abruptly edited in the minutes leading up to its publishing time.

That's because DJ ran the Iguana Video in this morning's Skull Session. This is a rare and tragic consequence of a communication breakdown between the 11W Newsroom and the field. We refuse to be known as the Ohio State Sports Site That Ran The Iguana Video Twice in One Day. This is not our brand. That's not why you give us your precious money and time each day while your employer pays you to enjoy our site. We don't take you for granted.

The editorial process at Eleven Warriors is robust and we scrutinize every topic, but Marshawn Lynch Narrating Iguana Video was one both of us declined to enter into that process, figuring there was no reason. It's too obscure. It's out of scope from our CFP and Ohio State Losing to FAU coverage. What are the chances someone else would be inserting the Iguana Video into their #content? None, we both figured. And we were both catastrophically wrong.

Since the Skull Session runs several hours prior to The Situational, the crisis management piece falls squarely in my lap. What I can tell you is that this section originally borrowed heavily from John Milton's Paradise Lost and drew parallels between Beast Mode, the Iguana and the fall of man from Eden. The snakes were, unironically, still snakes. Lynch was the flawed and exceptional father of mankind escaping his demons - in this case, quite ironically, New Orleans Saints - and finding peace in the endzone. 

But that's gone now because DJ and I - who communicate dozens of times every single day - arrogantly failed to inform each other of our Iguana Video intentions. So this section is now an apology, a mea culpa and a cover-up. An investigation will be forthcoming.

In the meantime here's David Bowie playing the recorder and then claiming he was never a baby:

Thanks for getting Situational today. Beat Clemson.