Saturday Skull Session: What Moron Kept Ohio State Out of the Playoffs?

Well, that was fun.

Credit to Brian Kelly and Notre Dame. They limped into the game riddled with injuries, lost their best defensive player and never quit. Ezekiel Elliott may disagree, though:

Straight from the ESPN broadcast. #NDInsider pic.twitter.com/oWTYc9YlCn
— Tyler James (@TJamesNDI) January 1, 2016

No credit to the social media intern that crafted that "#CultureBeatsScheme" tweet when Notre Dame trailed by two touchdowns. That tweet was as awful as it was becoming of the source.

The Irish are welcome to try to bring that culture this way any time between today and the Sept. 3rd, 2022 date in Columbus. Victories over Notre Dame don't happen enough given the distance between the two midwestern powerhouses.

As of this writing, 33% of polled readers said they weren't satisfied with this season. I assume that third is all rich people who can no longer feel joy after a life of fulfilling every carnal desire on a whim.

If 12-1 with a season-ending double kill over Michigan and Notre Dame doesn't satisfy you then you might want to buckle up because there's turbulence ahead.No. 4 seeds with a "third-string" quarterback don't win the playoffs every year.

Letting preseason expectations dilute your enjoyment of a season like 2015 is a road to insanity, which is fine if you want to morph into a sentient YouTube comment.

The 11W Fiesta Bowl drip:

Photos
Videos
Nike trolled Under Armour and Notre Dame with a "Champions Today" shirt.
NFL-bound Joey Bosa: "This was the best three years of my life."
Ohio State broke Notre Dame down with success on first down.
The Buckeye offense got back to its old mechanical ways against Notre Dame.
Ezekiel Elliott went on a rampage unseen since Marcus Hall's 2013 exit from the Big House.
Bosa and Elliott are gone, but other draft-eligible players are in a holding pattern.

ALL FOR PLAYOFF EXPANSION, BUT... The second victory of the day was Defeated Iowa getting dumped in the Rose Bowl, whose committee has aged about as well as Billy Cosby's comedy.

They deserved that turd for choosing Iowa—best win: Northwestern—over a one-loss Ohio State coming off a dismantling of Michigan. Stanford–Ohio State is, as Vico says, the apotheosis of Rose Bowl matchups, which we deserved if we're to pretend the Rose Bowl is still "The Granddaddy Of Them All."

Poll college football fans, and they'd likely support playoff expansion by a large margin. (Who doesn't want more games featuring two elite teams?)

But poll those same fans and they'll tell you they're against paying the players.

These two positions couldn't coexist in a rational mind. While playoff expansion would bring better games, it would also sink the tentacles of ad, sponsorship, and TV money deeper into the sport.

You can tell by the way he use his walk...

Not that I'm inherently against advertisers; they help put a roof over my head and food on my table. But these schools claiming they're broke is like a person who makes $100,000 a year that they live paycheck to paycheck. It's poverty by choice. (Clemson, a landgrant school with an enrollment of ~21,000 just announced plans for a $55 million "village" for its football players.)

Expansion is another step towards amateurism, an illusion already wearing a shirt two sizes two small.

The playoffs will eventually expand, and if it goes to something like 8 teams then I hope the first round of the games are played on college campuses. (FCS, by the way, is up to 24 teams.) They would be already if not for college football's toxic relationship with some of these archaic bowl committees.

A biblical disaster wouldn't prevent Ohio State from selling out the Horseshoe in January if Alabama, Clemson, or Oklahoma came to town. Ohio State fans would sell out Satan Stadium if the Buckeyes ever played Lucifer's scrub-ass team of pretenders.

Another option would eliminating a regular season game. (As cool as Hawai'i's uniforms and haka were, it's not as if I'll tell my mediocre grandkids about the classic time ol' grandpa sat on his couch and watched Ohio State make a gang of islanders tap out.)

ASH EATING WELL. Salute to Chris Ash, who spearheaded the Silver Bullet reformation after the 2013 debacle.

Vonn Bell took a pic with Chris Ash after the game, yelled out, "Last time wearing OSU gear, and he just got a bonus! Ruth Chris tonight!"
— Ari Wasserman (@AriWasserman) January 2, 2016

Ash will take his handful of select minions with him, and he won't leave as beloved as Herman.

The founder of MENSA left Ohio State at the pinnacle for an assistant at Ohio State because, as you might not know, he's a genius. He also made the savvy move of not going to the conference with Urban Meyer, Mark Dantonio, and Jim Harbaugh.

On top of that, he moved to a school out of Ohio State's hunting depth. Chris Ash is now actively working against Ohio State every day.

2016's PHOTOGRAPHY PULITZER WRAPPED UP. This picture made the rounds on Twitter yesterday, but I'm still posting it here because it's so epic it will probably hang on my wall one day.

So much going on this pic of New Year in Manchester by the Evening News. Like a beautiful painting. pic.twitter.com/szKKRM4U4i
— Roland Hughes (@hughesroland) January 1, 2016