Down went the top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday, leaving three unbeaten teams likely to fill out the College Football Playoff bracket in Michigan, Washington and Florida State, along with a scramble for a once-beaten outlier to join them, possibly Alabama if not Texas.

And to think for the past two months everyone across the college landscape has been roundly criticizing the Huskies right and left for winning in complicated ways.

In the end, Kalen DeBoer’s team made things extremely easy for the CFP committee by winning a school-record 13 games in a row, including Friday’s Pac-12 championship game 34-31 over Oregon. Georgia now has the longest winning streak in the country at 20 games after Georgia’s loss.

In the Big Ten title game on Saturday, Michigan easily defeated Iowa 26-0, and Florida State avoided damage by defeating Louisville 16-6 in the ACC title game with a third-string and true freshman quarterback. Both teams finished the season with 13-0 records.

This undefeated trio will almost certainly receive CFP invitations on Sunday, and a 12-1 Alabama squad made a compelling case to be included in the final four formats of college football when they defeated previously-ranked Georgia 27-24 in the SEC championship game.

“It is the best,” said Bill Hancock, executive director of CFP, earlier in the week. “There is nothing most deserving in the committee’s vocabulary. They are tasked with ranking the top teams, and they accomplish this. Just remember that phrase: best teams.”

At the time, the Florida State team led by Bobby Bowden used travel expenses as justification for bailing, claiming that $100,000 in travel, lodging, and other expenses would offset any possible $135,000 payout from Husky Stadium.

Three years after the Seminoles signed a contract in 1979, after the game was agreed upon in 1971, they changed their minds.

More likely, Florida State just didn’t want to play a Don James-led UW team that was as successful as DeBoer’s current Huskies and had just made two trips to the Rose Bowl.