Thursday afternoon, the College Football Playoff made an executive decision to change the postseason format, and for good reason.
It's holistic. It makes sense. It takes rankings and the adage of "what have you done for me lately?" into account and rewards the best teams with deserving spots (including Notre Dame).
The Buckeyes had one of the most challenging playoff roads on paper, despite excelling with flying colors over the likes of Tennessee, Big Ten champion Oregon, Texas, and the Fighting Irish en route to a history-making title win.
With the new format, which essentially makes the CFP rankings in unison with the playoff seeding, the Buckeyes' path would have undergone a few tweaks.
Before diving in, executive director Rich Clark released a statement on the committee's behalf regarding key elements of the format fans should remember entering future seasons.
"After evaluating the first year of the 12-team Playoff, the CFP Management Committee felt it was in the best interest of the game to make this adjustment," Clark said. "This change will continue to allow guaranteed access to the Playoff by rewarding teams for winning their conference championship, but it will also allow us to construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performance on the field during the entire regular season."
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According to a hypothetical bracket, the Buckeyes would have ended up as the No. 6 seed in the field and wound up hosting No. 11 Arizona State in the opening round. Had they won, their path would have seen them play No. 3 Texas to advance to the CFP semifinal.
From there, they would have had to play a combination of Penn State, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, or Penn State down the stretch. However, had Ohio State and Oregon advanced to the title game, they would've played each other under the new format instead of in the Rose Bowl.
It will certainly take some getting used to, but at least there is now full transparency about the teams that deserve to play one another for the opportunity to win a championship.
Whether history would have repeated itself will never be known. But, the parity would've still been at an all-time high.
This December, it will be contested in actuality. If it works, it will be great for the sport. If not, it'll more than likely beg the question about what it could've been.