PASADENA, Calif. —

On a big day for college football, a national semifinal game between Florida State and Oregon was as much a morality play as a game between two of the country’s best teams.

The game was cast early on as a battle between good and evil. The undefeated Seminoles, shrouded in controversy, were cast as villains, while the Ducks, with an appealing Heisman Trophy winner in Marcus Mariota, were cast as heroes.

By the time Mariota scored Oregon’s 51st point, on the way to a 59-20 victory, the hero-villain narrative had been replaced by plain and simple facts: Mariota outdueled Jameis Winston; Oregon routed Florida State, the defending national champion; and the Ducks had made a roaring statement: We belong.

As the confetti rained down, the bands blared and the Oregon fans flooded the Rose Bowl in a sea of green and yellow to congratulate and hug one another, Ahmad Rashad stood on the sideline, soaking in the atmosphere.

“Now you know what people who went to places like Michigan back in the day felt,” he said. “We didn’t feel like that when I was at Oregon. Now we do.”

Known now as a broadcaster and television host, Rashad was an All-America running back at Oregon, where he played in the backfield with the Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts. Rashad, whose name was Bobby Moore in college, was born in Portland and reared in Tacoma, Washington. He said he chose Oregon over Notre Dame because “it was more important to build a program, and it’s pretty much built now.”

But do the ends justify the means?

In 2013, the NCAA issued Oregon a series of penalties, including three years of probation, for failing to monitor its football program in the Chip Kelly era. Kelly coached Oregon from 2009 to 2012, before he left to become the Philadelphia Eagles’ coach. Oregon appeared in four straight BCS bowl games under Kelly and found a way to bridge the talent gap through aggressive recruiting and the support of Phil Knight, who made Oregon a virtual billboard for Nike apparel.

The NCAA cut Oregon’s official paid visits to 37 from 56 for the next three academic years, reduced its spring and fall evaluation days in each of the next three seasons and barred the program from using recruiting services during the probation.

Oregon did not receive a bowl ban, but Kelly received an 18-month show-cause penalty; if a university in the NCAA wanted to hire Kelly in an athletics role, the university and Kelly needed to appear before the infractions committee.

But in real terms, the NCAA penalties, while a source of embarrassment, have not put a dent in the Oregon machine, which is off to Arlington, Texas, for a Jan. 12 date with Ohio State in the national championship game.

I asked Rashad if he was concerned about the program becoming bigger and bigger. He said he was not. “Whatever comes with getting bigger, you want that,” he said.

Of the final four teams — including Florida State, Alabama and Ohio State — Oregon was regarded as the relative newcomer and the only one not to have won a BCS national championship.

“This gets the attention of everyone across the country that they’re real,” Rashad said. “They have great uniforms, now they have a great football team. They could be the best in the country.”

Ohio State will have something to say about that, but the point is well taken: Oregon is in the conversation.

Earlier in the week, second-year Oregon coach Mark Helfrich acknowledged that while Oregon was comfortable in its own skin, a national championship would send a message to the rest of the nation.

“A championship would validate things externally a lot more than I think internally,” he said.

He also acknowledged that Oregon’s fashion statement with its uniforms might have been a necessary gimmick to put Oregon football on the map. “The ascension probably started a little bit with the helmets and the uniforms and all that kind of stuff, but hopefully we’ve moved beyond that,” he said. “We talk constantly about the guys in the uniforms. The uniforms don’t give you points.”

Oregon scored 59 of them Thursday. Who knows how many they will score under the perfect conditions at AT&T Stadium?

This is what we do know: In search of an angle to sustain itself until game day, the news media will be tempted to create a new narrative, this one contrasting Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones, who was recently a third-stringer, with Oregon’s Mariota.

Long before his phenomenal performance against Alabama, Jones became notorious for an unfortunate message on Twitter that questioned the need to go to class when he was at college to play football. Mariota is a smooth, three-year starter who bypassed the NFL draft to play a magical season at Oregon.

The temptation will be to cast Jones as a symbol of everything wrong with big-time college sports and Mariota as an example of everything that is right.

If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it is how little we know about the men and women we cover.

What we do know is that on Thursday, Mariota and Jones, Oregon and Ohio State, turned in amazing performances.

There are no saints and no sinners, just two big-time football programs trying to win a championship.

Let’s leave it at that.

William C. Rhoden is a sports columnist with the New York Times.