CFP Quarter-Finals' Preview; NIL & Transfer Portal Claim Another Top Coach; Transfers Bail on Bowls

The first round of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff produced four blowouts, all won by the favored home team by a combined victory margin of 77 points.

This week's quarter-finals promise to be more competitive.

These games will be played in traditional bowl sites, rather than on college campuses, one of the things that I hope will be changed in the near future.

Like many others in the media and the coaching fraternity, we believe the first two rounds should both be played on college campuses and that the playoff seeding should match CFP rankings, instead of basing No. 1 through 4 on conference championships.

 Here’s a preview of each quarter-final matchup (all times Pacific):

No. 3 Boise State vs. No. 6 Penn State 

Fiesta Bowl (Glendale, Ariz.) 

Dec. 31, 4:30 p.m. on ESPN

The teams have never met, but both have fond memories of the Fiesta Bowl, where Penn State won the national title in 1987 over Miami and Heisman winner Vinny Testaverde, intercepting him five times, and where Boise State beat Oklahoma 43-42 in in 2007 with a Statue of Liberty two-point conversion.

Penn State looked very impressive in crushing SMU in the first round. The Nittany Lions' defense completely rattled SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings. This week, though, they'll come up against the best running back in the country, Heisman runner-up Ashton Jeanty, and the nation's fourth highest-scoring offense. 

Jeanty has rushed for 2,497 yards so far this year, 131 behind Barry Sanders' all-time record, including 192 yards and three TDs against No. 1 Oregon. He may have a productive evening against Penn State, which had trouble stopping the run against Oregon, USC and Ohio State. 

The Nittany Lions are favored by 11 points. As noted previously, I don't think Boise should have the No. 3 seed. But I also don't think its quarterback, Maddux Madsen (22 TD passes, 3 interceptions), is going to throw two pick-sixes, like SMU's Jennings did. The Broncos should make it closer than the spread, and could spring an upset.

No. 4 Arizona State vs. No. 5 Texas 

Peach Bowl (Atlanta) 

Jan. 1, 10 a.m. on ESPN

Arizona State, the pre-season pick to finish last in the Big 12, finished 15 places higher and won the conference championship in one of the biggest Cinderella stories of the season.

Second-year coach Kenny Dillingham will challenge Indiana's Curt Cignetti for National Coach of the Year honors after turning around an ASU program that was in the dumpster.

The Sun Devils are led by the nation's second best running back, Cam Skattebo, who has scored nine touchdowns in his last three games and whose 1568 yards from scrimmage is second only to Jeanty.

But Texas has the best defense in the country, along with a balanced offense that generated 292 rushing yards in a first-round win over Clemson, and a considerable size advantage.

The Longhorns are favored by two touchdowns. ASU is hoping that Dillingham's magic, Skattebo and a "team of destiny" vibe will produce a New Year's Day surprise.

No. 1 Oregon vs. No. 8 Ohio State 

Rose Bowl (Pasadena, Calif.) 

Jan. 1, 2 p.m. on ESPN

This is the matchup many people--including this writer--believe is the national championship game being played in the quarter-finals.

And how fitting that it will be held in the Rose Bowl, with Pac-12 alum Oregon, in its first year in the Big Ten, against Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State.

The teams met earlier this season with Oregon winning a 32-31 thriller. Both quarterbacks played brilliantly. Oregon's Dillon Gabriel and Ohio State's Will Howard each passed for over 300 yards and two TDs, and also ran for a TD.

Ohio State will be coming off a dominant win over Tennessee, in which its injury-plagued offensive line dominated the Vols' defensive front. Oregon has been idle for 24 days since winning the Big Ten title game over Penn State.

Will the layoff hurt Oregon? Was Ohio State's first-round win a sign that Coach Ryan Day has finally discovered how to win the big ones?

Despite Oregon's No. 1 seed and prior victory, Ohio State is a 2.5 point favorite. The Buckeyes have a 9-2 edge in the series, but the Ducks have won the last two.

This one could go either way, but we like the Ducks to make it three in a row.

No. 2 Georgia vs. No. 7 Notre Dame

Sugar Bowl (New Orleans) 

Jan. 1, 5:45 p.m. on ESPN

The teams met in the Sugar Bowl 43 years ago when Georgia beat Notre Dame 17-10 to win the national championship. The Irish dominated the game and held Georgia to 127 yards in total offense, but four turnovers, a blocked field goal, and a communications gaffe between kick returners that allowed the Bulldogs to recover a kickoff on the Irish one yard line sealed Notre Dame's doom.

That type of performance became routine during Brian Kelly's 11-year tenure as head coach, as Notre Dame continued to self-destruct in matchups against the best teams in the country.

The Irish have been trying to carve a new identity under Marcus Freeman and, other than an inexplicable loss to Northern Illinois, came up big this year. They beat Indiana 27-17 in a first round playoff game that was 27-3 with two minutes left.

Georgia is a slight (1.5 point) favorite, even with starting quarterback Carson Beck sidelined by injury. The Bulldogs have a talent and size advantage in this one, but the gap is smaller than in recent years.

Notre Dame's running game, led by Jeremiyah Love (above), who had a 98-yard TD run in the first round win over Indiana, and quarterback Riley Leonard, could pose problems for Georgia's defense.

Backup Bulldog QB Gunner Stockton, who played well filling in for Beck in the SEC championship game against Texas, will be facing arguably the best secondary in the country.

I think Leonard and the Irish defensive backs will make enough big plays to pull off an upset.

Larranaga Says "Enough:" College basketball lost another one of its top coaches last week when Miami's Jim Larrañaga, who'd taken the Hurricanes to the Final Four less than two years earlier, decided to retire in the midst of his 14th season at the school.

Larrañaga won 704 games, was national Coach of the Year in 2013, and led two teams to the Final Four. His 11th-seeded George Mason team upset No. 1 Connecticut, Michigan State and North Carolina en route to the Final Four in 2006.

But like Virginia's Tony Bennett, who quit two months ago, Larrañaga decided he couldn't handle the current environment in college basketball, dominated by NIL payments used as recruiting inducements, the constant threat of the transfer portal, and other schools poaching your players by waving huge stacks of money at them.

Even after his team's Cinderella season, Larrañaga discovered that several of his players were heading for greener pastures.

"What shocked me beyond belief was, after we made it to the Final Four just 18 months ago, the very first time I met with the players, eight of them decided they were going to put their name in the portal and leave," Larrañaga said at the press conference announcing his intention to step down.

"I said, 'don't you like it here?' (They said) 'No, I love it. I love Miami. It's great.' But the opportunity to make money someplace else created a situation that you have to begin to ask yourself, as a coach, 'what is this all about?' And the answer is, it's become professional...After 53 years, I just didn't feel like I could successfully navigate this whole new world I was dealing with."

Larrañaga follows a number of other disillusioned coaching legends who've departed in the last few years, including Bennett, Duke's Coach K, Stanford's Tara VanDerveer, North Carolina's Roy Williams and Villanova's Jay Wright.

He won't be the last. The college game has become the pro game, and the parade out the door will continue unless some sanity is restored through a new structure that includes collective bargaining, salary caps, contracts and restrictions on player movement. 

Bowl Transfer Opt Outs: The timing of the transfer portal window is wreaking havoc with bowl games. Some 146 players opted out of the five bowl games played last Friday due to the portal, per Fanstake and D1 Ticker.

The breakdown: Oklahoma (22) and Navy (1) in the Armed Forces Bowl; Georgia Tech (10) and Vanderbilt (10) in the Birmingham Bowl; Arkansas (27) and Texas Tech (13) in the Liberty Bowl; Syracuse (8) and Washington State (18) in the Holiday Bowl; and USC (18) and Texas A&M (19) in the Las Vegas Bowl.