Now that everyone has thawed out after a freezing weekend, let’s take a look at what we learned about the first round of the new one, 12-team college football playoffs.

Start with this: the games were bad, the format needs improvement, but the overall concept is still a major improvement over the four-team playoff and its predecessors. This tournament expansion was long overdue, and the benefits were obvious.

On-campus games are fantastic additions to the playoffs. They are a reward for a good season and maintaining the atmosphere that makes this sport special. Additionally, home-field advantage has definitely helped the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Penn State Nittany Lions and Texas Longhorns win and advance. (The Ohio State Buckeyes weren’t bothered by what was almost a neutral fieldan interesting development in itself.) When the SMU Mustangs had several pre-snap penalties while attempting to run red zone plays in front of the Penn State student section, the tactical home field advantage was on display.

Bringing the elements into play in South Bend, State College, Pennsylvania, and Columbus, Ohio, has only strengthened the sport’s regional flavor, branching out from the air-conditioned domes and constant heat of many bowling venues. All weather is football conditions, and these were some of the coldest games in college football history. Winter football holds a treasured place in NFL history, from the 1967 Ice Bowl to the 1981 AFC Championship Game to the 2002 fallback rule set and beyond. College football now has the opportunity to build some of that same history.

And although competitive balance was not achieved, with all four games decided by an average of 19.3 points, the playoff games provided an opportunity for more good teams to play more meaningful games. Think about it: In a four-team playoff world, Ohio State would have been out of the national title race. Now the Buckeyes appear to be the legitimate favorites to win it all. Without access to the playoffs, they would have half-heartedly prepared for a hollow bowl game with a dozen or more players opting out. Same with Notre Dame, which could very well find itself playing in the semifinals or beyond..

Don’t listen to the revisionist curmudgeons who insist the old ways were better. Most of the teams we saw play this weekend would take action this month. Instead, we had playoff games that were more impactful than ever.

That doesn’t mean they were good games, though. This was not the case. This is the result of several elements:

Blowouts happen in football. This also happened in the four-team version. Here are the semi-final results from this 10-year period:

Some scores in championship matches:

The Nebraska Cornhuskers defeated the Florida Gators 62-24 in the BCS Championship Game.

Second, the bottom teams in this year’s field have been flawed throughout the season and into the playoffs. This shouldn’t have come as a shock. Many of us said there weren’t 12 great teams – and there rarely are. But providing more opportunities for more teams to play for something is a good thing, even if it doesn’t uniformly produce good games. (Think about what you would have watched – or not – this weekend in a four-team playoff world: like the New Mexico Bowl, the Las Vegas Bowl and the Rate Bowl.)

Third, seeding is a problem that needs to be solved. A few top-four teams that should have received a first-round bye instead faced the two lowest-seeded teams, No. 1. SMU, 11th seed, at No. 4 Penn State and No. 12 Clemson to No. 3 Texas. If the Nittany Lions and Longhorns had matched their rankings, the Arizona State Sun Devils and Boise State Broncos would have played this weekend and we might have had two fewer blowouts.

Automatic byes for four conference champions are nice in theory, but in practice it has produced an uneven distribution that unfairly penalizes some top teams.

Big Ten champion and No. 1 seed Oregon now has to face an Ohio State team that should have had a top-six seed and been on the other side of the bracket. Southeastern Conference champion Georgia must face Notre Dame, then possibly Penn State, to reach the championship game. Meanwhile, the teams they beat to win those leagues — Penn State and Texas, respectively — will be double-digit favorites going into their quarterfinal matchups against Boise State and Arizona State.

These top four seeds are also deprived of the same home-court advantage enjoyed by teams ranked five through eight. Oregon, the nation’s only undefeated team and the undisputed No. 1 seed, is scheduled to host Ohio State in Eugene, Ore., instead of playing them amid a crowd split 50-50 in the Rose Bowl. Georgia should have Notre Dame in the hedges in Athens, Georgia, not in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.

It will be easier to determine the ranking than to resolve the situation on the field for the quarter-finals. College football’s bowl addiction was clearly on display after each of the first-round games, when bowl officials appeared at postgame press conferences to awkwardly present “invitations” to their games. It’s a relic of the past, but the sport can’t seem to stop outsourcing some of its biggest games to third parties in faraway lands.

Yes, many fans enjoy a winter getaway to Southern California, Arizona, or South Florida. But games are more accessible and affordable to more fans of top-ranked teams when played on campus. All top teams should reap the rewards of their season by enjoying this home-field advantage, not just those who failed to secure a first-round bye.

Aside from the seeding and quarterfinal venue issues, the next round should be pretty juicy.

The Georgia-Notre Dame Sugar Bowl — a distant rematch of the 1981 game in this same venue that led to the Bulldogs’ second national championship — is a marquee, high-intrigue whopper. How Georgia performs against the elite Irish defense with backup quarterback Gunner Stockton is the main storyline. This is an example where having a first-round bye and more than three weeks between games is a big advantage for the Bulldogs. They can put Stockton through starting QB training camp to get him ready. For the Irish, their quest to win the biggest games they play continues: Beating the Indiana Hoosiers was great, but the Sugar Bowl is the kind of benchmark game they’ve failed in for about three decades.

The Rose Bowl benefits from a traditional throwback game with an old Pac-12 program in Oregon against the oldest of the old-school Big Ten programs in Ohio State. It could also be an earlier-than-ideal matchup between the two best teams still in play. Oregon won a 32-31 classic in October that came down to the final minute; this one could do the same thing. The Ducks’ journey in search of the first natty in school history is not an easy road.

Both Boise State and Penn State have a chance to relive their past glories in the Fiesta Bowl. It was there that the Broncos scored their biggest victory in history, beating Oklahoma 43-42 in overtime with a stunning succession of trick plays, capped by a dazzling Statue of Liberty for the walk-off victory. Penn State returns to the desert where it won its last national championship, in the 1986 season, upsetting Miami in the Fiesta, in what was college football’s first real attempt at creating a standalone championship game. The match was moved from New Year’s Day to January 2 to increase visibility and reinforce the idea that the winner would be the undisputed national champion.

Arizona State vs. Texas in the Peach Bowl gives the least likely playoff team, given preseason expectations, its chance against a blue blood that entered the season with title aspirations national. The Sun Devils were picked to finish last in the Big 12 and instead won, building momentum and confidence as their 11-2 season progressed. Now we’ll see if they’re ready for a major increase in difficulty, or if they’ll look like one of the other big underdogs in the first round.

The 12-team College Football Playoff should only get better from here. But even though the first round matches weren’t good, the product is still an improvement over what we had before.