Best of Rivalry Week: CFP chaos, flag fights and more misery for Ohio State, Miami and Clemson

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David Hale, ESPN Staff WriterDec 1, 2024, 01:45 AM ET

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College football reporter.Joined ESPN in 2012.Graduate of the University of Delaware.

We all have baggage. It’s the cost we pay for choices made, experiences endured, a life lived. For some, it might be the girl who got away. Maybe it’s the job they didn’t get. Or perhaps it’s the time you pretended to pee like a dog in the end zone during an Egg Bowl. The point is, to live life to its fullest is to understand that regret is part of the package.

The good news, however, is there is always a chance to do better, to set down that baggage and find something approaching redemption.

That’s what Saturday was supposed to be about for Ryan Day, Mario Cristobal and Dabo Swinney. Week 14 was going to be a redemption story. Instead, the college football gods delivered misery.

Well, unless you’re a Michigan fan. Then it was all comedy.

A quick accounting of where things began Saturday.

It had been 1,442 days since Clemson made a College Football Playoff, but with a win against South Carolina , the Tigers would’ve been poised to squeeze into the first 12-team postseason and erase years of doubts about Swinney’s ability to win in the modern era of college football.

It had been 1,828 days since Ohio State beat Michigan, but on Saturday, the odds were stacked so heavily in the Buckeyes’ favor, any other result was unfathomable. This was an Ohio State roster as talented as any in program history and a Michigan team put together with duct tape and glue sticks.

It had been 7,672 days since Miami won a conference championship. But the Hurricanes spent this season as the class of the ACC, finally living up to the immense expectations that have followed the program since its glory years, even if Miami has spent the past 20 years as college football’s version of U2 — still releasing new work, but effectively just a nostalgia act.

It’s tough to say how many days it had been since Cristobal properly handled a late-game scenario since you can’t divide by zero.

Week 14 didn’t promise to erase every blemish, forgive … Read More