Why Alabama must be viewed as College Football Playoff contender even with three losses

Posted by Admin November 25, 2024 Football

If the College Football Playoff committee is left needing a three loss team for the bracket, perk up Alabama. Looking at you.
Ole Miss failed because, for all of its talent, Lane Kiffin’s Rebels lacked killer instinct.
Looking for a national championship contender? Start with Ohio State, Georgia, Oregon or Texas.

Alabama and Mississippi refused to let Indiana claim the gold medal for Saturday’s biggest failure.

Losing by 23 points at Ohio State? Yeah, that’s bad, Hoosiers.

Losing by 21 points at Oklahoma, which hadn’t beaten a Bowl Subdivision opponent in nearly two months? Yeah, that’s even worse, Crimson Tide.

Losing to the opponent that once saw you as its savior? Yeah, that’s ghastly, Lane Kiffin, but it’s fitting for a season in which up is down and parity rules.

As the College Football Playoff race enters its final turn, and the SEC considers how to apply lipstick to a pig, here’s what’s left on my mind after Week 13:

Does Alabama remain in College Football Playoff hunt?

I can’t believe I’m writing this, because the Crimson Tide just got blown out by a bad opponent, but, yes, Alabama retains a flutter of a playoff pulse.

That’s no testament to Alabama, by the way.

Alabama’s inconsistent performance left it no room to grumble if it’s left out of the field, but, the playoff contains 12 spots, and the bracket doesn’t shrink just because this season served an abundance of upsets and fewer superpowers.

Alabama (8-3) faced one of the nation’s toughest schedules. Wins against Georgia, at South Carolina and at LSU prop up the résumé, even as losses to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma drag it down.

The Tide are ranked No. 13 in the latest US LBM coaches poll. The College Football Playoff rankings will be updated Tuesday night.

If the committee needs a three-loss team to round out its field, Alabama will be at the top of the heap.

Alabama must win the Iron Bowl and likely needs to receive some help to make the CFP. The best path? South Carolina beats Clemson, Syracuse beats Miami and SMU wins the ACC championship.

That would leave the ACC with just one team, SMU, with fewer than three losses, threatening to turn that conference back into a one-bid league.

Other avenues exist, too, to save Alabama.

How about if Georgia loses to Georgia Tech, then loses again in the SEC championship game? Georgia out, Alabama in?

Regardless, Alabama fans won’t remember this season as a successful debut for Kalen DeBoer. Needing help from Georgia Tech or Syracuse to make the playoff is not meeting Alabama’s standard. That doesn’t mean DeBoer’s tenure is doomed, but his debut went bust.

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What happened to Ole Miss?

Good teams find ways to win their clunkers.

Talented teams that lack mental fortitude are left saying shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Ole Miss goes down as a talented team that flopped, because the Rebels couldn’t handle pressure situations.

The Rebels persistently tightened up in crunch time and failed to make enough big plays with games on the line. Ole Miss surrendered a fourth-down miracle in an inexplicable loss to Kentucky, then missed a field goal that would have forced overtime.

The Rebels failed to protect a second-half lead against LSU, unable to deliver a critical fourth-quarter stop, and gave away a game Ole Miss had no business losing.

Against Florida, the Rebels scored zero points on three red-zone trips.

The lasting image of this Ole Miss season will be Lane Kiffin’s stupefied look in the closing seconds of the loss at Florida, as the realization sunk in that he’d been outdueled by Billy Napier – the coach whom many Florida fans wanted Kiffin to replace just last month.

Kiffin managed to do more with less, early in his tenure. He usually beat the teams he was supposed to beat. The script flipped this year. With his best Ole Miss roster ever, Kiffin did less with more. With a schedule tailormade for playoff qualification, he lost to one mediocre opponent after another – Kentucky, then LSU, then Florida.

After Ole Miss smashed Georgia, we stumbled over ourselves crediting Kiffin for rectifying the program’s line-of-scrimmage weaknesses with transfers.

But, even a robust NIL collective can’t purchase a killer instint.

Ole Miss’ total lack of calm, cool, composed killer instinct, from the sideline through to its quarterback, caught up with the Rebels in what must go down as one of the most disappointing seasons of Kiffin’s career.

Is 12-team CFP bracket here to stay?

I suspect more change awaits. Fan reaction seems overwhelmingly positive to this format, and the system is working exactly how it’s designed. This big, beautiful mess gave us one of the most dramatic seasons I can recall.

The playoff’s structure meant Indiana-Ohio State, Ole Miss-Florida and Alabama-Oklahoma were critical games. Expand the playoff to 16 or even 14, and those results become less consequential.

So, does the playoff need to change? No.

But, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey swings a big stick. How do you think Sankey feels about his conference now being positioned to qualify fewer teams than the Big Ten, while the ACC snags two and maybe even three spots?

I don’t expect that will sit well with the SEC. Enjoy this playoff format this year and next year, because I suspect modifications might be coming in 2026 that stack the deck further toward the supposed “Super Two” conferences.

Who is winning the national championship?

Good question. This is not one of those years when a superpower or two pulls away from the pack. Even undefeated Oregon shows some vulnerability.

If you allow me to draft four teams that I think could win the national championship, and you get everyone else, I would take, in order:

1. Ohio State2. Georgia3. Oregon4. Texas

And, I’d feel good about my chances, although not nearly as good as if I could have 2019 LSU or 2020 Alabama.

So long, superpowers. You had a good run.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.