Top Four In The Pool.

Here's what TigerBlog doesn't get about the College Football Playoff: Why not Ohio State? 

The Buckeyes have one loss, on the road at No. 1 Michigan, by a 30-24 score. Where was Ohio State in the conversation? 

It's obvious that since Texas beat Alabama then Texas needed to get in ahead of the Crimson Tide. The committee decided to take both of them.

Florida State was unbeaten but left out. Georgia has one loss, to Alabama, and is also left out. 

Those were the top six. Ohio State? 

TB doesn't have any idea how you can say that Texas has a better resume. Ohio State has wins over Penn State and Notre Dame and only the close lose to Michigan, who is a clear No. 1. Texas beat Alabama, but the Longhorns also lost 34-24 to Oklahoma, who isn't ranked in the top 10.

This isn't to say that Ohio State is a slam dunk, or that Alabama can't win it all. Wouldn't that be wild, especially since the Crimson Tide was a fourth-and-goal from the 31 away from losing to Auburn? For Ohio State not to be mentioned? Very surprising.

To be fair, this wouldn't have been a fun year to be on the selection committee, not with an unbeaten Florida State team that isn't very good right now, a whole bunch of 12-1 teams and an expanded tournament on its way next year. 

Once the games start, the focus will shift anyway. To quote BrotherBlog: "Go Huskies."

Then there's the NCAA men's water polo tournament. You really have to hand it to the people who seeded that one.

The format is to seed the top four and then create matchups from there. The top four seeds were UCLA, Cal, USC and Princeton, in that order. 

One of those, as they say, is not like the others.

The first round saw the top four all win easily, and by margins that were in descending order by seed. UCLA beat Biola by 13. Cal beat Fordham by 10. USC beat San Jose State by eight. Princeton beat UC-Irvine by five (12-7).

That set up the semifinal round, where UCLA beat Princeton 17-13 and Cal beat USC 10-9. That left Sunday's championship game, where Cal beat UCLA 13-11.

Princeton's season was remarkable. The Tigers went 28-6 on the year, setting a program record for wins. And there were some big names in the win column, including UC-Irvine twice.

In fact, of those 28 wins, there were 14 against teams who were ranked. There was also a two-goal regular season loss at UCLA as well, and the Tigers led the NCAA semifinal game 8-7 at the break.

Princeton also won its third-straight Northeast Water Polo Conference championship, becoming the first team to win three straight East titles since Navy from 2006-08.

Roko Pozaric finished the season with 76 goals, the fourth best total in program history. He'll enter his senior year 48 goals away from the career record of 254, held since 2005 by John Stover. 

This was more than just the Roko Show. There were seven players with at least 30 goals, and goalies Kristof Kovacs and West Temkin are both excellent. This is a team in every sense of the word as well. 

Once again, the NCAA water polo final matched two teams from California. There's never been a final that hasn't.

Getting into that mix is not easy, and you have to give head coach Dusty Litvak a ton of credit for where the program is now. 

TigerBlog started today talking about the College Football Playoff, and to most fans of college athletics, it's about football and basketball. Schools have made geographically ridiculous realignment moves based on the money that football can bring in.

For TB, though, the great part is about all of the other sports and all of the other athletes who do what they love to do, far away from the huge spotlight. As he watched the Alabama-Georgia SEC championship game the other day, he texted a friend and Princeton alum and said that this is the kind of event that he'll never experience in his career, but still he wouldn't have wanted to work anywhere but Princeton.

Teams like Princeton men's water polo in 2023 is exactly why. He'll take that over the College Football Playoff any day.