STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
New Year's Day, of course, is college football's time to shine. And this year, it had a new look - quarter finals in the first ever 12-team Division I football playoff.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: That ball's intercepted. It is intercepted. Mukuba seals it. Hook 'em Horns. They're headed home to Texas to play in the Cotton Bowl.
INSKEEP: Very calm call there in the Texas-Arizona State game, as it was heard on ESPN. That game was a thriller, others not so much. And whatever happened, Nicole Auerbach was covering it for NBC Sports. She was at the Rose Bowl and joins us now. Good morning.
NICOLE AUERBACH: Good morning.
INSKEEP: How was the game that you saw?
AUERBACH: Well, I thought it was going to be the best one of the round, turned out to be a rout. Ohio State certainly looks like a national championship team, and they took out the No. 1 overall seed in very convincing fashion, 34-0 at one point in that game.
INSKEEP: I got to tell you, at the final score, 41-21, even my 9-year-old, who doesn't really know college football is like, wow, what's going on here? This is a blowout.
AUERBACH: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: I mean, how did this happen? How did Ohio State - they weren't even one of the top seeds? How did they emerge so dominant?
AUERBACH: Yeah, they've been a different team since they lost to Michigan at the end of the regular season. And, you know, they don't really even have an answer for it. They just say they're executing a lot better. But they're certainly playing with a lot of confidence. And it's a roster that their boosters spent $20 million to retain talent, bring in talent out of the transfer portal. So they were always capable of this. They have a ton of talent all over the place, but it's really coming together in a way we hadn't seen all year.
INSKEEP: And thanks for the reminder that the teams that win this year are likely to be teams that have money to put on the table because of the way that college football has changed over the last few years. OK, so that's one of the games that was played, let's talk about the game that wasn't. The Sugar Bowl is delayed until this afternoon. That was a security measure because it's played in New Orleans, where, of course, there was the attack yesterday, many people killed on the street in what authorities describe as a terror attack. How does the delay affect the playoffs, Nicole?
AUERBACH: Yeah. Well, obviously, I think it was the right decision and, you know, probably the only decision that they could make. But they did have a little bit of a time constraint because the semifinal round, the game that this one feeds into, is the first of the two. So I think that's part of the reason you're seeing it moved up a little bit. It was a little bit less than 24 hours scheduled for kickoff after it would've been last night.
INSKEEP: And, of course, we'll have Notre Dame and Georgia playing there when it happens. People try to move on with their lives. And, of course, we had a couple of other playoff games on New Year's Day, so how are the semifinals shaping up?
AUERBACH: Well, you're going to have Ohio State and Texas in the Cotton Bowl. I'll be there. Very excited for that one.
INSKEEP: Good.
AUERBACH: Heavyweight fight. But the other game, I think, is going to be really interesting, too. So Penn State took care of Boise State, so they are awaiting the winner of the Sugar Bowl. So you're really talking a lot about the blue bloods in the sport in the very first year of the 12-team playoff.
INSKEEP: Is this playoff format feeling like a success now that we're in the middle of it?
AUERBACH: Well, there's been a lot of blowouts, as you mentioned. The Texas-Arizona State game, the thriller double overtime game, that really helped because we just haven't had a lot of exciting games. There's questions about the seeding and the way the bracket is set up and first-round buys. But I think for the most part, you know, it made a lot of meaningful games in the regular season. It included teams that we don't always see and have access to something like this, with a Boise State, SMU, Indiana. So I overall think it's a success, but there's definitely some tweaks that can be made to maybe avoid some of the blowouts.
INSKEEP: In any case, we'll end up with a legitimate champion as opposed to voting for one, as was the case a generation ago.
AUERBACH: Yeah, absolutely. And they don't get to just claim national championships. They do play it out on the field, which, again, I think is a plus.
INSKEEP: Nicole Auerbach of NBC. Thanks so much.
AUERBACH: Thanks for having me.
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