There are no easy answers when it comes to fixing the College Football Playoff — specifically the eminently flawed semifinal round:
**The CFP powers-that-be cannot extend a ‘bye’ to the No. 1 seed, given the multi-million-dollar ad buys (TV/title sponsorship) which accompany the semifinal matchups every year (rotating among the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta, Peach bowls).
**The committee cannot explicitly dissuade Oklahoma from compiling a CFP-worthy resume during the regular season, even though the Sooners sport an average defeat margin of 18 points in four Playoff games (all losses).
**The committee cannot force Pac-12 powerhouses, like Oregon, to avoid scheduling Auburn during non-conference play. (As a one-loss conference champion, the Ducks would have been strong Peach Bowl candidates.)
**The committee cannot clone Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney or even Ohio State’s Ryan Day, in hopes these blue-chip coaches could take their particular brand of awesomeness to the Big 12 or Pac-12.
**And most definitely, there cannot be an automatic rule of inserting two SEC schools into every four-team Playoff, even though we’re 100-percent certain an SEC defense would never surrender seven touchdown passes in one half to LSU quarterback Joe Burrow.
Which brings us to this: Clemson and Ohio State did the CFP creators a wonderful service on Saturday, producing a big-play, high-drama classic that had all the makings of a national-title game … instead of a mere Fiesta Bowl semifinal.
Of equal importance, Clemson’s exhilarating comeback victory helped take the focus off LSU’s 63-28 dismantling of Oklahoma in the Peach Bowl (Playoff Semifinal #1), an untenable, borderline-unwatchable blowout that featured the following records:
**Most touchdown passes in a Playoff game (Burrow — 7)
**Most touchdown passes in Peach Bowl history
**Most individual total touchdowns in a Playoff game (Burrow — 8)
**Most receiving yards in a Playoff game (Justin Jefferson — 227)
**Most team points from one half in a Playoff game (LSU — 49)
**Most team points in a single Playoff game (LSU — 63)
