Ohio State’s blowout win over Tennessee sets up the epic Oregon rematch. It’s just a shame that it happens in the quarter-finals

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Aren’t you amused?

No, you probably aren’t.

Four first-round College Football Playoff games, four results with at least two scores. Two of them were outright blowouts (at State College and Columbus), a third was a dud that came closer with two late touchdowns (at South Bend) and a fourth in Austin contained our only exciting moments of the fourth quarter (thanks, Clemson ).

Here in Columbus, the Buckeyes left us wondering a few things after a 42-17 drubbing by Tennessee:

Why couldn’t they do this against Michigan?

Are they back to being favorites to win it all?

Maybe they are! After all, no other college roster is more talented, as they reminded us Saturday night when they covered college football’s first-ever series of playoff games.

Let’s take a look at how ugly it got so quickly. Ohio State’s first punt came with four minutes left in the second quarter. Tennessee’s first pass came six minutes into the second quarter. Suddenly it was 21-0, and the more than 25,000 Tennessee fans who made the trip north were left angry and shivering in the 20-degree wind chill.

The Buckeyes (11-2) showed what they can do when they cook, and boy, did they cook. By cooking, we mean targeting two of the most explosive and talented receivers in the country. Jeremiah Smith and Emeka Egbuka tore through the Vols for 11 catches and nearly 200 yards.

Throw in an Ohio State defensive front that swarmed freshman starter Nico Iamaleava, and the Buckeyes were well on their way to a win that should lower the heat on the Ryan Day Pressure Cooker from boiling to less boiling. Afterward, even Day acknowledged that he and the coaching staff called Saturday’s game “more aggressive” than the last outing here against Michigan.

“You are defined by the way you deal with adversity in life,” he said. “To see how they reacted, they saw a look in the eyes.”

Up next: a rematch against Big Ten champion Oregon in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day — a glorious matchup between a team with college football’s best resume against a team with college football’s most talented roster.

The last time they met, back in October, the Ducks won 32-31 on a last-second finish in a thriller in Eugene. Whether these two should meet again this early in a 12-team playoff is certainly a question worth pondering.

But alas, that’s what the format gives. Instead of seeding teams based on the CFP selection committee rankings, the format calls for the four highest-ranked conference champions to be seeded as the No. 1-4 – a rule that, while understandable as an incentive for league champions, creates unbalanced seeding.

For example, the committee’s no. 6-ranked team, Ohio State, seeded eighth and now faces the top seed in the quarterfinals. Look for the format to undergo changes, potentially starting with this very seed rule that only grants byes to conference champions, as explained in this story last week.

But back to those blowouts.

The ACC was knocked out in the first round, its champion was taken down by the SEC’s runner-up, and its runner-up crushed by the Big Ten’s runner-up (if you’re debating conference strength, those results should be helpful). The Big Ten’s third-best team took down the SEC’s third-best team in Columbus. And Notre Dame easily handled the Big Ten’s fourth-best team.

In total, the winners scored 145 points and the losers 68. All higher seeds and home teams won.

Chalk, they call it.

This doesn’t necessarily mean those teams — especially SMU and Indiana — should have missed the playoffs. Maybe it just means that the separation between the great teams and the good teams, at least in college football this year, is a bigger gulf than we first realized.

This is not entirely new. Don’t remember all those CFP semifinals in the last decade? Fourteen of the 20 semi-final matches resulted in results of at least two goals. Eight of those were at least three-touchdown blowouts.

It happens.

But what it does tell us, as someone here in the Ohio Stadium press box whispered to this writer: “Maybe this will show everyone that we shouldn’t expand any more.”

Fourteen teams? Sixteen?

Maybe not.

And it’s now up to Boise State and Arizona State to prevent a nightmare for many college football fans and stakeholders: an All-SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame semifinal.

The Sun Devils face Texas in the Peach Bowl, and the Broncos tangle with Penn State in the Fiesta. Boise State and ASU were ranked No. 9 and no. 12 by the committee, but got the third and fourth seeds because of the pesky conference title rule we mentioned earlier.

Can they deliver? As underdogs against the sport’s big brands, they will have masses across the country rooting for them.

Meanwhile, in Pasadena, we get what many expected in the preseason, which might be a national title game: Oregon vs. Ohio State.

It’s a mouth-watering duel with the sunset over the San Gabriel Mountains in the background. In fact, as midnight struck here in Columbus, Rose Bowl officials were preparing dozens of single-cut roses to be presented to Ohio State players and coaches.

What a difference those three weeks make, right? The last game here ended in an embarrassing flag-planting brawl at midfield and a shocking loss to three-touchdown underdog Michigan — a fourth straight loss for the Wolverines in this heated rivalry series and one that seemed to turn off some fans here.

“You don’t just move on from the game,” Day said. “You identify the problems and let the players talk. You put together a plan to get these things fixed. Saying it doesn’t weigh you down, it does. These guys have a lot of pride.”

Despite the efforts of Ohio State administrators, many Buckeyes fans sold their tickets to this playoff game. Visiting teams will receive 3,500 tickets for the first-round CFP games. The Vols brought at least 25,000 strong, crowding this 102,000-seat stadium in orange. That was more visiting fans than some longtime Ohio State reporters had ever seen in this place.

By the start of the fourth quarter, many of them were gone, leaving the cool night for the trip down Interstate 71 after suffering what was the nastiest of first-round blowouts. After all, OSU outgained Tennessee 473-256 in yards and played its third straight – third string – quarterback in the final minutes.

As a final farewell on this cold Saturday night, Ohio State stadium operators played over the loudspeakers a familiar refrain for those in orange: Rocky Top.

Back to Tennessee they went. And off to LA goes the Buckeyes, who delivered the most crushing victory of this historic weekend in sports.