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The Alabama Crimson Tide got cheated out of the final spot in the College Football Playoff. Sure, Alabama lost three games, including a loss to 6-6 Vanderbilt and a blowout loss to a lowly Oklahoma team. But you just don’t understand! Oddsmakers favor Alabama over multiple at-large teams, so clearly the Tide should have been, especially over SMU.
But we want to know is how and why the Crimson Tide got screwed over by that good-for-nothing College Football Committee. So we’ve collected all the ways that Alabama got cheated out of spot, as told by Alabama’s athletic director, Crimson Tide fans and several members of the media.
1) Alabama Got Jobbed Out Of A Playoff Spot Because Of It’s Loaded Non-Conference Schedule
If you really want answers, you go directly to the source. In this case, that source is Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne. Because clearly he is an impartial source of information who knows just what went wrong for the Tide.
According to Byrne, Alabama was the victim of a difficult non-conference schedule and now it will have to reassess how it schedules non-conference games in the future.
“We have said that we would need to see how strength of schedule would be evaluated by the CFP,” Byrne tweeted on Sunday. “With this outcome, we will need to asses how many P4 non-conference games make sense in the future to put us in the best position to participate in the CFP. That is not good for college football.
There’s just one problem. Bama’s non-conference schedule stunk this season, which fans quickly pointed out with a community note.
“All of Alabamas losses came in conference play,” the note reads. “Alabamas non conference schedule was one of the easiest in the country playing two Group of 5 schools, WKU and USF, one FCS school and one Power 4 team, the 5-7 Wisconsin badgers who finished 12th in the Big Ten.”
Okay, but surely Bama got the short end of the stick otherwise!
2) The College Football Playoff Committee Doesn’t Respect Alabama’s NFL-Level Talent
The Crimson Tide has a loaded roster. Anybody who follows recruiting or the NFL Draft can tell you that. After all, there’s a reason so many of their players end up getting drafted highly. Don’t believe us? Just ask former NFL Scout turning Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy.
As someone with access to college tape and staff of 11 former NFL scouts that logged hundreds of hours evaluating this CFB season, it’s easy to see why SEC coaches are upset with final playoff bracket.
Based strictly off future NFL talent, Alabama, South Carolina, & Ole Miss…
— Jim Nagy (@JimNagy_SB) December 8, 2024
“Based strictly off future NFL talent, Alabama, South Carolina, & Ole Miss (and you can even throw in Florida, Texas A&M, and LSU for that matter) are all easily in Top-12,” Nagy tweeted.
I mean, s—, why even play the games. Let’s just turn the 16-team SEC into four pools. The top two teams from each advance into an eight-team playoff! Because after all, talent levels decide football games!
3) The Committee Needs To Listen To Oddsmakers Who Clearly Know Better Than Anyone Else
If we’ve learned anything in recent years, it’s that we need the gambling industry to have more influence on American sports. How can we do that, how about letting some handicappers choose the CFP field!
It will never be done, but if you want an honest assessment of the committee rankings, throw a pro handicapper in the room to react and give feedback to the rankings they come up with.
— Chris Fallica (@chrisfallica) December 8, 2024
Chris “The Bear” Fallica of Fox Sports and formerly College GameDay fame believes this is the best way to decide who’s really deserving.
After all, if you’re favored in a game, that means that you should be in. Never mind the fact that Bama was a 22.5-point favorite against Vanderbilt and a 14-point favorite against Oklahoma.
Games are played on paper on handicappers, so why should the results matter?!
4) SMU And Indiana Would Lose Hypothetical Games In The SEC And Therefore Are Not Deserving
As we learned above, games are played on paper. And on paper, both SMU and Indiana would lose multiple games in the SEC. Therefore, they could not possibly be more deserving than the all-power Alabama Crimson Tide.
Because if there’s one thing that we learned watching college football this season, it’s that results are predictable and the teams with the highest potential always reach that potential.
The best possible version of Bama would (obviously) smoke SMU and Indiana (which we just know, trust us) so how could they possibly get left out?
This entire 12-team playoff is a conspiracy against Alabama and the SEC. The rest of the world just doesn’t see it yet.