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Column: Thrilling season makes it tough to predict college football’s playoffs

Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly shouts at an official after an apparent winning touchdown catch was called back due to offensive pass interference in the closing seconds of a 31-27 loss to Florida State on Saturday.
(Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel)
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Notre Dame was the last program you thought would screw up a simple throw and catch.

The Fighting Irish didn’t invent the forward pass, but certainly modernized it during a 1913 game against Army.

Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne practiced all summer while working as lifeguards, before unleashing this secret pass-catch weapon in a 35-13 victory at West Point, N.Y.

One newspaper account noted “the westerners played the fastest game of football seen on the local grid iron in years.”

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Dorais completed 14 of 17 passes for a then-unthinkable 243 yards. P.S.: Have Tom Brady and Peyton Manning ever said “thank you”?

Flash forward 101 years to Saturday night in Tallahassee, Fla., where all Notre Dame needed to upset Florida State was a legally executed pass play from the opponent’s two.

College football’s rooting interests, so often aligned against Notre Dame, were leaning with the Irish against the Seminoles and their petulant passer, Jameis Winston.

Everett Golson appeared to deliver the goods when, with 13 seconds left, he found Corey Robinson wide open for an apparent touchdown.

Officials, though, waved off the holiday by calling Notre Dame for pass interference.

The worst part was the officials appeared to get it right; where was a Pac-12 Conference crew when you needed it?

Apparently, according to “rules,” you cannot act like a snow plow and clear a path for your receiver/ teammate. The officials could have nailed two receivers, Will Fuller or C.J. Prosise, for violations.

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You knew the argument was toast when former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz, now an ESPN analyst, said it was a penalty.

Irish Coach Brian Kelly remained among those in the minority.

“We execute that play every day,” he said after the game. “And we do it legally and that is the way we coach it.”

Florida State Coach Jimbo Fisher, however, said he warned officials after what he thought was a Notre Dame “pick” play.

“We said just be aware of it,” Fisher said.

Kelly kept punching Sunday when he said that “Florida State blew the coverage and they got rewarded for it.”

Oh, well …

The finish was a thriller in a season of thrillers, which makes prognosticating for the playoffs such fool’s folly.

Early this month, after Oregon lost at home to Arizona, we awoke to headlines proclaiming the Pac-12 was dead.

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NFL.com’s Inside Slant column reported the “Pac-12 on road to being shut out” and ESPN Insider proclaimed “Pac-12 unlikely to have a playoff team.”

The ESPN headline was over pay site that required a subscription for more information (um, no thanks).

Suddenly, the new conference on the outs is the Big 12, not the Pac-12. Experts staked that claim after kingpins Baylor and Oklahoma fell Saturday.

Oregon, the team with no chance Oct. 8, appeared at No. 6 in Sunday’s Associated Press poll. That practically puts the Ducks in the playoffs if they win out and win the Pac-12. Four of the five teams ahead of Oregon in the top five — Mississippi State, Mississippi, Alabama and Auburn — play each other.

The Pac-12, as a balanced bundle, has half its teams in the top 25.

The selection committee decided to wait until Oct. 28 to release its first top 25 for a pretty good reason: it wanted to mix in some facts.

One school allowed to steal early poll positions was Mississippi State, which rose from unranked to No. 3 based on victories over “top 10” Texas A&M and Louisiana State. Texas A&M is 5-3 and no longer ranked and Louisiana State is 6-2 and ranked No. 24.

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That said, do not expect the selection committee to ask Mississippi State to surrender 11 bogus poll spots it earned from Texas A&M.

The best any of us can do now is just hold on until December. The number of games already decided by a sneeze is astonishing.

Oklahoma was likely eliminated from contention because kicker Michael Hunnicutt, inarguably one of the nation’s best, missed a 19-yard chip shot against Kansas State.

All Coach Bob Stoops could do after Oklahoma’s 31-30 loss was put his arm around Hunnicutt and tell him he’d trust him with the next big kick.

“I would, and I still will,” Stoops said.

There are too many of these sob-story results to put trust in any preseason conviction.

The Pac-12 was actually a letdown this weekend because only one game, Utah’s two-overtime victory at Oregon State on Thursday, was decided on the final play. UCLA’s two-point victory at California had the relative cushion of Marcus Rios’ circus interception and the Bruins running out the clock inside their five-yard line.

The committee convening in Dallas next week will be asked to draw some conference-strength conclusions based on these Pac-12 games decided on the final gun: Arizona over Cal (Hail Mary) Cal over Washington State, Utah over UCLA, Utah over Oregon State and Arizona State over USC (Hail Mary).

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USC over Arizona ended with a missed Arizona field-goal try and the Trojans taking a knee. USC’s three-point victory at Stanford ended with a late Stanford fumble and the Trojans running out the final seconds.

Washington State’s one-point victory at Utah was decided on an incomplete pass with 30 seconds left and, in nonconference play, Notre Dame defeated Stanford late on a fourth-down touchdown pass.

We know nationally that Florida State, the Southeastern Conference West and, yes, even Notre Dame, are still strongly positioned for the playoffs.

We know regionally that Oregon has reemerged as the Pac-12 team to beat, but also that its big game may have moved a week from Nov. 1 (Stanford) to Nov. 8 (at Utah).

We think two teams lower on your poll radar, No. 19 Utah and No. 24 Louisiana State, might end up the bulls in this year’s playoff china shop.

Utah’s next four games are home against USC, at Arizona State, Oregon, at Stanford and Arizona.

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Rapidly improving Louisiana State has two league losses but can rearrange the SEC West with home victories against Mississippi (Saturday) and Alabama (Nov. 8).

As for more predictions, in keeping with this column’s theme, we’d like to take a pass.

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