Dan Lanning refuses to make excuses after Oregon falls short against Ohio State

The Ohio State Buckeyes' underwhelming performance failed to reflect their overwhelming talent in pivotal moments throughout the season. Along with a bitter loss against arch-rival Michigan, the Buckeyes allowed 10 points in the fourth quarter to suffer a 32-31 loss against the Oregon Ducks in October.

The victory catapulted Oregon to the No. 1 spot in the rankings, and they refused to relinquish the spot for the remainder of the season. In their first season in the Big Ten, the Ducks steamrolled through the conference with an explosive offensive attack. Oregon seemed destined to win their first national championship under coach Dan Lanning, who led the Ducks to an undefeated season that included victories against three playoff teams.

Ohio State's loss may have knocked them out of contention in years past, but the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff format offered Buckeyes coach Ryan Day with an opportunity for redemption — and he seized it. The Buckeyes routed Tennessee for a rematch against Oregon in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. This time, Day left no chance for a nail-biting, back-and-forth finish. Ohio State jumped out to a 34-0 lead in the first two quarters, effectively ending the Rose Bowl by halftime.

Dan Lanning refuses to blame new seeding format for Oregon's loss

The 41-21 throttling in the Rose Bowl Game raised eyebrows and questions about the Ducks. How did a top-ranked, undefeated Oregon team fall so flat in their biggest game of the season? Lanning refused to blame seeding issues or the long layoff between games for wilting in the Rose Bowl, per NBC Sports' Nicole Auerbach.

"We had an opportunity," Lanning said after the game. "We didn't take advantage of our opportunity. I'm not going to make excuses for our opportunity. Ultimately, you got to beat great teams to be in position at the end of the year and we didn't do that. This is the road that we had to travel and they did it better than us tonight. So no complaints for us for having that opportunity. They just took advantage of it and we didn't."

Tournament seeding should be fairly straightforward: The best teams should be rewarded with the easiest path to a national championship. The current format and seeding of the College Football Playoff bracket failed to accomplish that simple goal.

The Ducks should have had the easiest path to a national title, but the current seeding format may have had the opposite effect for the Ducks. Oregon's undefeated season was rewarded with a treacherous path to the national championship.

Under the current seeding format, first-round byes are rewarded to the highest-ranked conference championships. The goal was to incentivize participation in title games, but it resulted in lower-ranked teams earning higher seeds than higher-ranked participants. Boise State finished as the eighth-ranked team but earned the third seed, and Arizona State finished as the 10th-ranked team but earned the fourth-seed. That left the fourth-ranked Texas Longhorns, the seventh-ranked Tennessee Volunteers and sixth-ranked Buckeyes as potential opponents for the Ducks in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals and semifinals.

The Ducks would have to face the top teams in the tournament eventually if they wanted to win a national championship. Still, it would've been preferable to not face the top teams nearly a month after their last game. Oregon defeated Penn State in the Big Ten Championship Game on December 7, and they did not play again until their matchup against Ohio State on New Year's Day.