For Alabama Crimson Tide fans they spent three hours Saturday afternoon in utter despair. The Crimson Tide start every season with SEC Championship expectations, so an uncompetitive 28-7 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs in Atlanta put a bad taste in the mouths of everyone in Tuscaloosa.
However, all of this talk about how a loss in an earned postseason game should affect their College Football Playoff chances are not grounded in reality.
History tells us that the Crimson Tide will be in the 12-team playoff pool that will be announced tomorrow.
Think back to just last year — the first season of the 12-team college football playoff. The SEC Champion Georgia Bulldogs earned a first-round bye with a win over Texas in Atlanta. Neither team was considered a “bubble team” going into the matchup, so the comparison doesn’t hold much weight.
In the ACC, however, it was not the same case. The 10th-ranked SMU Mustangs were taking on the 16th-ranked Clemson Tigers.
The 9-3 Tigers entered the game fresh off their third loss of the season the week prior. The 11-1 Mustangs would go on to lose in that ACC Championship.
Instead of punishing the Mustangs, a team that was criticized for having an easy road to a top-ten seeding, for playing the extra game, the College Football Playoff Committee kept them in the pool.
Again, that was a 10th-ranked team losing a conference championship game to number 16.
In Alabama’s case, the ninth-ranked Crimson Tide were on the losing end of a conference championship game against the third-ranked Bulldogs, a team they have already beaten.
You cannot punish a team for playing in the conference championship.
The committee hasn’t done it before, and they won’t do it now.
The 12-team playoff will be announced tomorrow at 12 P.M. EST.
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