2015 College Football Playoff Championship Game, open thread: Savor this finale

In this space, I could tell you that Oregon plays Ohio State at 8:30 p.m. on ESPN in the College Football Playoff Championship Game, and that ESPN3 has about a billion different broadcasts of the game for you to watch.

I could tell you that, regardless of the time that has passed since Urban Meyer's departure from Florida, and despite the drumbeat from some camps about how some Gators fans should get over it, that you're entitled to your opinions — bitter and long-held, reasoned and resolute — about Meyer and his Buckeyes, and can absolutely root for Oregon because of them.

I could tell you that Oregon winning tonight would induct the Ducks into the fraternity of national champions that Florida was last to join anew, on a brilliant New Orleans night in 1997, and that rooting for the Buckeyes is rooting for Florida to hold that distinction for just a bit longer.

I could tell you that either team winning is going to make Jim McElwain's job of restoring Florida to a national championship contender that much harder. If the Buckeyes win, Meyer can sell another ring to the Sunshine State prospects who grew up watching him lead the Gators to two; if the Ducks win, the coolest kid in the entire school is the colossus, too.

I could note that the orgiastic fervor that Playoff organizers want to whip up around this game is a harbinger of a future in which only the biggest and best-funded athletic programs will be able to compete for championships — but given that Oregon's benefactor is the single person most integral to Nike, and that Ohio State's got blood ties with Nike's biggest star (who can joke that this is "Nike vs. the Buckeyes", that would just be reaffirming the obvious.

What I most want to tell you is this: Savor this.

You're going to spend the next 200 days feverishly checking this and other sites for updates on college football. You will count the weeks until the Saturday when Florida next takes the field in The Swamp. You will watch a 17-year-old's highlight tape three times in 20 minutes. You will watch old Colorado State and Mississippi State games for glimpses of what could be in orange in blue.

You will not have this, a real, live college football game in high definition and Technicolor, for quite some while.

Complain about it if you want. Whine that playing the biggest college football game of the season in a pro stadium that has existed for five years cheapens the experience. Grouse about the coach in red. Pine for a Florida offense that looks like the one the guys in white and silver will execute. Make fun of the refs.

But savor it.