#Ranking season is finally upon us, and Alabama placed 4th in the first CFP bracket of the year.
The top 4 were about as chalk as you could possibly expect. Ohio State was the easy #1 team, as they’ve obliterated everyone they’ve played. Indiana and Texas A&M were fairly interchangeable at 2 and 3. The Aggies have a big win over Notre Dame, but they’ve had some struggle wins against bad teams like Arkansas and Auburn and, overall, have drawn a fairly weak SEC schedule.
The Hoosiers, meanwhile, had a convincing win over Oregon and demolished Illinois. Outside of a close one against Iowa, they’ve handled everyone else easily. Really, the win over Oregon being better than the win over Notre Dame is what put them above the Aggies.
Alabama was then an easy choice for #4. The win over Georgia rivals Indiana’s win over Oregon, and the Tide has also took on a gauntlet of a schedule, beating #5 UGA, #16 Vanderbilt, #22 Missouri, and #25 Tennessee. The lone loss to FSU for the season opener keeps Alabama from being considered with the top 3.
Georgia and Ole Miss are next as the other 1-loss SEC teams, but don’t have quite the collection of wins that Alabama does.
BYU has quietly gone undefeated, so they can’t be left out and check in at 8th despite playing a whole lot of nobody. They’ll square off with #8 Texas Tech in a couple of weeks, so that should knock one of those two out.
Oregon, Texas, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma round out the bottom of the top 12, though Texas and Oklahoma winds up getting left out for #14 Virginia and an unranked Memphis, because the whole ACC is terrible, and we have to let a G5 team in for some reason. For fairness, you see.
According to FanDuel, Alabama is now at -850 to make the playoffs this year, and they’re behind only Ohio State and Indiana to win the whole national championship at +750. The Tide is now in a great place. Win the next three and they get a bye in the playoffs no matter what. They could most likely even drop one more game and still be in, though it would, of course, require a little help from there.
Beat LSU, beat Oklahoma, and, of course, beat Auburn. That’s all we need.
Roll Tide!
