In the end, it appears the College Football Playoffs selection committee got it right. College football's two best teams, Alabama and Clemson, will play for the national championship Monday night.
We also know that Ohio State and Washington probably didn't deserve to be in the Final Four. Clemson blew the Buckeyes out 31-0, and the Crimson Tide beat the Huskies 24-7.
Neither game was even as close as the scores indicate, and if you weren't a dyed-in-the-wool member of the Tide or Tigers Nations, the games were mostly uninteresting.
Of course, after waiting for years and years to have a playoff, and wading through a lot of mythical and computer-driven championships, this is the best thing to happen to college football since the day ESPN began broadcasting.
The playoffs are controlled by the 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences, not the NCAA.
But Mark Emmert, the NCAA's president, voiced an opinion last month that he would like to see an eight-team playoff.
Would that be twice as good as the four-team playoff?
Probably even better than that.
A restructuring would most likely ensure that all the Power Five conference champions would be included in the field.
This year the committee chose Ohio State to represent the Big Ten instead of conference champion Penn State, which gave the Buckeyes their only loss before losing to Clemson in the playoffs.
Having five automatic bids -- the Power Five conference champions -- and three at-large would make the announcement of who made the playoffs more exciting.
This year it was pretty obvious who the committee was favoring for its top two spots. Alabama was the undefeated SEC champion, Clemson was the one-loss ACC champs.
Then the argument began: Did Washington belong in more than Oklahoma? Did Ohio State deserve it more than Penn State?
If the committee had been able to seed eight teams, with a limit of two teams from any conference, there would have been zero confusion and little controversy.
Plus, football fans would have been treated to four intriguing games on the weekend before Christmas instead of being force-fed bowls stocked with 6-6 teams.
The quarterfinal matchups would have have pitted No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 8 Florida State; No. 2 Clemson vs. No. 7 Southern Cal, No. 3 Ohio State vs. No. 6 Oklahoma, No. 4. Washington vs. No. 5 Penn State.
Every conference champion would be in, and there would have had to be more exciting games than the playoffs have had so far.
But some might argue: Why not go to 16 teams?
That would have four teams playing 16 games, as many as NFL teams play in the regular season, and two teams with one game more. That is too many games for student-athletes who deserve something more than a bowl gift.
Even with a field of eight, there should be incentives for the players. If a player has at least a 3.5 GPA, he gets $1,500 for each playoff game. A 2.5 gets $1,000 and all others $500.
Of course, none of this happens until the FBS conferences meet with ESPN, and the most powerful entity in sports tells them it is going to happen.
Until then, a four-team playoff is still better than anything that has come before it.
Monday night's championship game -- despite the uninteresting semifinal games -- has the earmarks of being a ratings buster.
Alabama, with a new offensive coordinator, and arguably college football's best head coach ever, will take on the pride of the ACC, which has won more bowl games this season than any other conference, and its head coach Dabo Swinney, who will be better than he was a year ago when these two teams last met for the championship.
Sports on 01/08/2017