And your winners are ...

 ... hell, I don't know. Notre Dame and Ohio State. Penn State and Ohio State. Ohio State and Ohio State.

And if you're inferring from that I'm at least reasonably comfortable with picking Ohio State over Texas in tomorrow night's Cotton Bowl, congratulations. I think the Buckeyes are going to win the whole schmear now. Thus I crawl out on a limb, chainsaw in hand.

As for Penn State-Notre Dame ...

They are too alike, the Nittany Lions and Fighting Irish. Both play smash-mouth football. Both their defenses are like barbed wire six layers deep in front of the German trenches. Notre Dame likes to run it down your throat with Riley Leonard and a squadron of gnarly running backs; Penn State counters with its gnarly tight end, Tyler Warren, who lines up everywhere and comes in six different flavors of mean.

So I'm gonna make the homer call  and pick the Irish, by either an eyelash or, more likely, a mangled knuckle. I'm guessing the score will be some Bo/Woody 12-10 production, but this is one of those games that'll end up 34-31 and we'll all wonder how.

Anyway.

Anyway, if I'm right, it's a Notre Dame-Ohio State national championship game, if I'm right. Or Notre Dame-Texas if Ryan Day blows again, or if the Longhorns get their backs up about hardly anyone pickin' 'em.

Otherwise, I have no further insight. Which will happen when you're trying to get your 69-year-old head around the fact Notre Dame is playing in the Orange Bowl a week after it won the Sugar Bowl, and Ohio State is playing in the Cotton Bowl a week after it won the Rose Bowl.

Now that I never could have called, back in the day. Strange new worlds, and what-not.