Oklahoma, Georgia To Meet At The Rose Bowl

PASADENA, CA -- Oklahoma and Georgia will meet in the College Football Playoff at the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day in Pasadena, the College Football Playoff organization announced Sunday. The Sugar Bowl will be this season's other semifinal, and it will match Clemson and Alabama.

Pac-12 champions USC will face Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl Dec. 29 in Arlington, Texas.

UCLA will face Kansas State in the Cactus Bowl Dec. 26 in Phoenix at Chase Field, home of baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Rose Bowl matchup was determined by the final CFP rankings, which are made by a 13-member committee of five former coaches, four athletic directors, two former administrators, a college president and a former sports reporter.

When assigning teams to sites, the committee places the top two ranked teams at the most advantageous sites, weighing criteria such as convenience of travel for its fans, home-crowd advantage or disadvantage and general familiarity with the host city and its stadium. Preference goes to the top- ranked team.

Defending national champion Clemson was first in the final CFP rankings, followed by Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama.

The College Football Playoff Semifinals annually rotate among the New Year's Six bowl games -- the Rose, Cotton, Fiesta, Peach, Orange and Sugar bowls.

Big 12 Conference champion Oklahoma (12-1) is quarterbacked by Heisman Trophy favorite Baker Mayfield and is fourth among Bowl Championship Subdivision teams in scoring, averaging 44.9 points per game.

Southeastern Conference champion Georgia (12-1) is fourth in scoring defense, allowing 13.2 points per game.
The Sooners roster includes one player from Los Angeles County: redshirt sophomore third-string nose guard Dillon Faamatau, an alumnus of Norwalk High School and Cerritos College.

There is also one from Orange County, freshman second-string tight end Grant Calcaterra, a graduate of Santa Margarita Catholic High School in Rancho Santa Margarita.

Oklahoma's roster includes three other players from Californi: junior Curtis Bolton, a reserve linebacker from Murrieta, sophomore Caleb Kelly, a starting linebacker from Fresno, and Jordan Parker, a sophomore cornerback from Pittsburg in the San Francisco Bay Area. Parker suffered a season-ending knee injury while blocking for a punt return in the season opener against UTEP.

Sophomore Marquise Brown, who is second on the Sooners with 49 receptions, was the leading receiver for College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita in 2016, following a high school career at Chaminade-Madonna High School in Hollywood, Florida.

No Georgia players played on the high school level in California. Second- string receiver Ahkil Crumpton played at Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys in 2015 and 2016 after graduating from West Catholic High School in Philadelphia.

Both teams will be making their second appearances in the Rose Bowl. The Bulldogs defeated UCLA, 9-0, in the 1943 Rose Bowl, scoring all their points in the fourth quarter. Oklahoma defeated Washington State, 34-14, on New Year's Day 2003.

Game tickets are available ticketmaster.com or by calling (800) 653-8000.

--City News Service/Photo via Pixabay/Bookbabe