I look at it like this. If OSU had won, we basically had the Playoff or the Rose. He can't figure out why some people wanted the Rose, even when people said they wanted it there as a fallback...just in case. He compared the Playoff to the NCAA tournament and the Rose to the NIT.
Here's how it see it. There are two cars parked on your front curb and you get to pick a car. You don't get the car, but what's inside. If you pick one car, the playoff, you get Kate Upton and all she's wearing is flip-flops. If you don't get that car, you get Christie Brinkley, who people my age grew up drooling over. She's still pretty hot, not as hot as some, but it would fulfill a lifelong dream. Well, Christie just went home with Urban Meyer, so now our fallback prize is, like, Reece Witherspoon. She'd still be nice to have, but it's not what we could have had.