The college football season is officially over as Florida fans last night watched Ohio State knock Notre Dame to win their first national title since the 2015 season.
No matter what your opinion of Ohio State, there are three takeaways Gator fans learned from the Buckeye's playoff run.
Elite Talent Matters
What these playoffs revealed is that if you are going to make a run and win the expanded playoffs, you better have a top-tier elite roster. A team might be able to pull off an upset or two, but eventually, the talent gap is going to catch up.
Ohio State, who spent $20 million to build their roster, had the third-ranked roster on the 247 Sports Talent Composite.
Since 2015, eight of the ten national champions were ranked in the top six of the Talent Composite. The two outliers were Clemson in 2016, ranked 9th, and Michigan last year, ranked 14th but also loaded with a ton of seniors.
Having An OC Matters
One of the bold moves Ryan Day made last offseason was to demote himself as offensive coordinator and hand over the play-calling duties to someone else. Initially, he hired Bill O'Brien, but O'Brien promptly left to be the head coach at Boston College.
So, plan B was to hire Chip Kelly away from UCLA.
In truth, Ohio State runs similar schemes to what Florida has done under Billy Napier, but the Buckeye offense had so many more wrinkles to it, and it kept Notre Dame on roller skates all night.
Scared Money Don't Make Money
One of the things we praised Marcus Freeman for coming out of the semifinals was his willingness to drive down the field towards the end of the half to get points before halftime despite the fact he had to insert his backup QB to do it.
But for whatever reason, down 16 points with under ten minutes to play, Freeman opted for a field goal that would have still kept the game a two-touchdown game. The Football Gods were not pleased, and the kick doinked off the upright.
Meanwhile, Ohio State faced third down with the prospect of milking the clock but guaranteed that Notre Dame would get one last chance. Instead, they went for a deep shot to Jeremiah Smith, and it won them a national title.