College Football Playoff's first round was cold and anticlimactic. Are you psyched yet?

Penn State coach James Franklin had the Hubris-o-Meter on tilt.

How could he possibly have thought going for it on fourth-and-1 at his own 19-yard line with a 14-0 lead was the right move?

But that’s what Franklin decided to do Saturday in the second quarter of a College Football Playoff game against SMU, and guess what? A Nittany Lions run was stopped cold. Turnover on downs. Mustangs’ ball. The new 12-team playoff’s first unthinkable coaching flub. Let criticism flood the streets and postseason chaos reign throughout the land!

Or, you know, a flavorless nothingburger.

Franklin gave a non-competitive, non-threat of an opponent with a shellshocked quarterback who’d already thrown two pick-sixes instant life. On another day, in another season, it might have been coaching malpractice.

Instead — fittingly, given the theme of this first round of on-campus games turned out to be anticlimactic mismatches — sixth-seeded Penn State’s defense ran onto the field and quickly grabbed another interception, and a 38-10 rout against 11th-seeded SMU that eventually would become unwatchable was back on.

Did we mention the “theme” thing already?

Boy, the expanded playoff was supposed to be more fun than this. Perhaps it still will be. But all those sports fans who love nothing more than a long, sprawling postseason tournament had to be as underwhelmed by the foursome of first-round flameouts as the rest of us were.

No. 7 seed Notre Dame led No. 10 Indiana 27-3 on Friday night before a late, meaningless Hoosiers rally. No. 5 Texas mostly toyed with No. 12 Clemson in a 38-24 affair. Before the first quarter of Saturday’s third and final clash was over, No. 8 Ohio State had a three-touchdown lead on No. 9 Tennessee en route to a 42-17 victory in a matchup that had at least seemed going in as though it would involve not one but two real, live championship contenders but instead was an all-out dud.

Not that it wasn’t exciting to see Notre Dame, Penn State and Ohio State look so strong. It was and it is. The Fighting Irish have a real chance to go all the way. The Big Ten has three teams — top-seeded Oregon being one of them, of course — capable of doing it. The playoff will regain any momentum it lost over the weekend.

It will, won’t it?

Complaints department: There was a lot of public whining Saturday about SMU having been selected for the playoff over a three-loss SEC team, the assumption being Alabama, Ole Miss or South Carolina would have fared a lot better in Happy Valley. It’s probably true. But fighting to wedge three-loss teams into the playoff is only slightly nobler than scamming grandmas out of their mahjong winnings. Give that a rest already.

Is there a problem with the way the playoff is seeded, wherein conference champions such as Boise State and Arizona State can get first-round byes while seemingly far better teams — Texas and Penn State, for example — have to play? Now that’s a reasonable argument. There has been much complaining about this, too, and it’s something the playoff committee will revisit.

Believe it or not: It turns out it can get kind of cold in the northern states in late December. Who knew? Yes, it was cold as all get-out at Notre Dame, Penn State and Ohio State. Yes, the cold and wind were factors in all three games. Yes, home-field advantage was real. Hopefully, we can stop talking about this now. That goes double for the weather-obsessed college football journalists who apparently have never heard of an NFL playoff game in Buffalo or Green Bay.

DeLuca does it: The best “moment” of the first round had to be the story of Penn State’s Dominic DeLuca. He walked on at his dream school after playing both ways (quarterback and safety) in high school — and winning a Pennsylvania state title — on a torn ACL. In four years at PSU, he worked his way from the scout team to special teams and all the way to Saturday, when he had a pick-six and a second interception right after the aforementioned brain freeze by his coach. College football still isn’t all about the money to everyone.

“Everybody’s journey is different,” Franklin said. “Everybody’s race is different. You’ve got to run your race and maximize the opportunities that you get. I think he’s a great example of that.”

Hop on the bus: It was a heck of a premise for a comedy flick, really. Saturday morning, several private jets carrying some of SMU’s most well-heeled donors were diverted from an overloaded State College airport and had to land approximately 70 miles away in Williamsport, a name you recognize from the Little League World Series. From there, they crammed into a party bus — former Mustangs great Craig James and golf star Bryson DeChambeau among them — rolled down the road and got to the game only after their team was already down 28-0. We’d call that fitting given the Mustangs were playing like little leaguers, but it wouldn’t be nice.