USC Goes To Rose Bowl, Washington to Playoffs

Washington is one of four teams to make the NCAA football championship playoffs at season's end.

USC will play Penn State in the Rose Bowl Game on Jan. 2.

So, it has been a good year for the Pac-12 Conference even with UCLA, Stanford and Oregon having a disappointing season.

A lot of conferences didn't do as well. The Oklahoma schools didn't qualify for the championship playoffs for instance, losing out to Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Washington.

Both USC and Penn State had to overcome slow starts resulting in three losses each and both came through with long winning streaks after that.

USC coach Clay Helton appeared to be in trouble a year ago but the players stood by him and now he's being recognized as a coach worthy of the USC tradition.

The committee that selects the four finalists has a tough job. The plain fact is there's usually more than four teams believing they should be chosen.

I believe the number of teams chosen should be six or eight. I know at that time a few more teams would believe they're qualified, but at least all the obvious ones would be in the playoffs.

And why not? It would bring one more week of high-level play and more dollars coming in from fans buying expensive tickets.

I've heard the argument that these are college kids and they have a long enough season as it is. But come on, what harm is one more week going to be?

This season Alabama is ranked number one and is favored to beat No. 4 Washington in the semi-final and the Clemson-Ohio State winner in the title game.

We'll see. At this level any of the four teams are good enough to prevail. But Alabama is a consensus choice as the No. 1 seed. Lou Saban is an all-time great coach and he has another in a long line of terrific teams.

I like college football a lot. I like the enthusiastic support of the fans of each team. I like the high scoring as the defenses don't dominate as they often do in the NFL.

I hope UCLA does better next season and I hope superb quarterback Josh Rosen makes a complete recovery from a shoulder injury that shortened his season.

He was hurt in a loss to Arizona State and although he didn't play anymore it was reported that he wouldn't require surgery

He's eventually going to have productive years in the NFL. Right now it's important that he concentrates on getting well.