It has taken just one season for the College Football Playoff to prove itself infinitely superior to the sham method that preceded it. But despite the progress, we’ve also seen its Achilles Heel on display in the same week we were introduced to its strengths.

The first thing proven by the CFP is the most important — the gap between the top two teams in the country and those that follow has rarely been wide enough to properly cull them from the rest of the herd.

No. 4 Ohio State put this on display with its 42-35 win over top-ranked Alabama, which would have been given a free pass to the championship game under the old system.

Bama, of course, was ranked No. 1 because it won the SEC West, which was perceived to be far-and-away the toughest division of the nation’s toughest conference. Instead, we’ve seen teams from the West go 2-5 in bowl games, exposing them as not so far above the rest of the nation as they’d force-feed you to think.

Under the BCS, the team Alabama would have faced is Florida State, which was ranked second in the media and coaches polls.

Instead, the Seminoles were wiped from the face of the Earth, or at least the face of Pasadena, by a vastly superior Oregon squad.

In both semifinal games, there was little question the better team won each time.

But there is still one question that will loom unanswered this year — is either team in the title game that much better than TCU?

The No. 6 Horned Frogs made the strongest argument to be part of the festivities with a 42-0 stomping of the Ole Miss team that defeated “No. 1” Alabama earlier this season.

It took this long (over 100 years) to get to a four-team playoff, so heaven knows when we can expect to see the field doubled. But with the two semifinal games setting ratings records for cable television, it’s only a matter of time before the next logical step in the process is taken.

The first College Football Playoff came out smelling like roses, and there’s just one more thorn to trim.