It was no big secret that the College Football Playoff selection committee might have an “Alabama problem” by the end of Saturday's Southeastern Conference title game, especially if the Crimson Tide lost. Turns out, they got whupped so badly by Georgia, they might have solved that problem themselves.
Alabama's third loss of the season was a 28-7 beatdown that wasn't that close. And though it might seem unfair to penalize the program for playing in the SEC
title game — an extra game against the third-ranked team that the others didn't have to play — it also might be hard for the committee to ignore what it saw.
The Crimson Tide came into this game ranked ninth, presumably high enough to lose and still make the 12-team field that will be announced Sunday. But No. 10 Notre Dame and No. 12 Miami are lurking behind, each with an easier schedule than the Tide, but both with a solid case for the playoff themselves.
There's not room for more than two of those three.
If the committee bypasses the Tide, it will be the second straight year that's happened. Making it worse is that last year, they were left behind in favor of SMU, a team the committee decided shouldn't be penalized for losing its conference title game (in the weaker Atlantic Coast Conference). SMU's loss was close. This one wasn't.
Now, the committee has to decide how to solve its Alabama problem.
One of the nightcaps Saturday pitted No. 17 Virginia against unranked Duke in the ACC title game. A Duke win would bring with it the possibility of the ACC champion being left out of the playoff.
The CFP rules call for the five best-ranked conference titlists to earn spots in the 12-team bracket. Tulane (American), ranked 20th in the latest CFP standings, and No. 25 James Madison (Sun Belt) each became conference champions with wins Friday night.
If the Blue Devils beat CFP No. 17 Virginia, there’s at least a chance that James Madison could be ranked ahead of them and take that spot that was presumed to be for the ACC winner.
“They’re tough. And I think they believe,” JMU coach Bob Chesney said after his team beat Troy on Friday to place the spotlight on that ACC game. “They know who they are and they know what they’re capable of.”
Though Alabama's loss provided another potentially helpful “data point” — a term the selection committee loves — Notre Dame and Miami always knew they would spend a restless night on the bubble.
The Fighting Irish, who moved down one spot despite a 49-20 win over Stanford last week, got what they needed when BYU lost badly in the Big 12 title game to kick off Saturday's title-game action. The Alabama loss didn't hurt, either.
Now, there's a chance that Notre Dame and Miami, each with 10-2 records, could be scrunched right next to each other in Sunday's rankings. The best way, of course, to compare two teams with the same record placed next to each other in the rankings would be to look at how they did if they played each other. In this case, voila, there's a “data point.” Miami beat Notre Dame in Week 1.
If they end up at 9 and 10 (see above on Alabama), then they'll both make the field and a lot of this won't matter. But if Alabama doesn't fall that much, and one of them ends up at No. 11, then the committee's treatment of the head-to-head matchup will mean everything.
This issue has come up almost every week so far. Committee chair Hunter Yurachek has never really been clear about any of it.
“A little bit of confusion. You're confused in terms of what we could have done differently and why we fell when we won 49-20,” Irish coach Marcus Freeman said. “We were up 42-6 going into the fourth quarter. I don't spend time talking about other teams, but it's what could we have done differently? I don't know.”
1 vs. 2: Will the loser of Saturday night's Ohio State-Indiana Big Ten title game drop from a top-four position and, thus, not get the valuable first-round bye? Likewise, will No. 6 Ole Miss, No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 8 Oklahoma — all of the SEC, all of whom didn't play — jump past the Tide?
Home field and other things: Alabama's loss left the Sooners in good shape for a home game in the first round. ... Meanwhile, CFP No. 13 Texas had to be hating Saturday. Even if the idle Longhorns (9-3) vault ahead of Alabama, they would still need a miracle to get in. They came into the season ranked No. 1 in the AP poll and had the nation's most hyped quarterback in Arch Manning. They have wins over top-15 teams Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt. They also lost at Florida — the Gators were bad this year — and got stomped by Georgia. They are staring at the likelihood of watching their archrival, Oklahoma, and two other teams from Texas play in the playoff while they sit it out.
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