A REGION THE FOOTBALL TEAM CAN BE PROUD OF?

That's the Old Confederacy.

Despite Alabama’s grinding, eventual Sugar Bowl dominance, it’s not inconceivable this title game could have been Clemson vs. Georgia — a battle of schools located fewer than 80 miles apart. Had a play or two gone differently in the Rose Bowl, it would have been Oklahoma vs. Alabama. Oklahoma-Clemson wasn’t all that farfetched, either.

You pick the matchup. It didn’t really matter. From the moment the four-team bracket was announced, it was essentially a Southern regional tournament; the vast majority of the country’s college football fans were outsiders looking in.

Sure, it’s a feature of the system — of 130 FBS teams, only four make the Playoff. But when the largest swaths of the country are regularly shut out, it’s a troubling trend.

Or, perhaps it's revealed preferences.

In the aftermath of Wisconsin's Orange Bowl victory, Badger fans were pointing to how relatively few five-star players amongst home-grown walk-ons got the better of the Convicts 'Canes and attended a university that produced way more Rhodes Scholars (who must have a varsity letter of some kind.)

The powers that be have been doing all sorts of things to bring down the Southeastern Conference.  OK, I was being mean a decade ago suggesting that S.E.C. meant Special Education Conference (and North Carolina's eligibility course scam was to make their basketball teams more powerful in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but until recently, that was universities served by the old Atlantic Coast Line, i.e. in the Heart of Dixie).  And yet, the image of lacquered women and charming rogues hanging out on fraternity house porches lasts.  The cool kids, not the nerds, and just a little Lost Cause nostalgia.  But proving important theorems?  That's for the B1G.  (Apart from Michigan, which didn't beat a team that got a bowl bid last season -- no Kellogg's or Post endorsements for you! -- the other B1G teams, including newcomer Penn State won their bowl games.  They do, however, prove important theorems in Ann Arbor.)

There may be, however, a connection between how the local collegiate teams are doing and how their professional counterparts fare.  Consider, this year, how New Orleans, [North] Carolina, and Atlanta are all in one conference playoff, and Jacksonville have returned to the other.  At least, with the Green Bay Packers shaking up their front office, the Wisconsin Badgers stand strong.