College Football World Rejoices As Alabama Is Left Out Of 12-Team College Football Playoff

Quinn Eaton·
CULTURESPORTS
·
Alabama SMU

Karma for Alabama?

After yesterday’s conference championship games, college football fans were left anxiously waiting to see how the College Football Playoff committee would seed the first ever 12-team College Football Playoff. Going into yesterday, it was believed that a win by Clemson in the ACC Championship against SMU would force the hand of the committee to leave out Alabama.

Here’s how that game ended:

That the the first ever FBS conference championship game to be decided by a 50+ yard field goal as time expires. You can’t keep Dabo out of the playoffs!

Once that game went final, speculation began as to which team was most deserving to earn what was percieved to be – and ended up being – the final spot in the expanded college football playoff. All five conference champions automatically earned bids to the postseason (Clemson wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise), leaving the committee to decide which other seven highest ranked teams made it into the tournament.

And here’s how they filled the rest of the bracket out:

With Clemson automatically getting in, but formerly being ranked outside of the Top 15 teams (let alone the Top 12), they were given the 12-seed. That meant that the final spot was the 11-seed, and the CFP committee decided that SMU losing the ACC Championship in last-second, walk-off fashion wasn’t going to keep them out of the tournament.

So that left Alabama as the first team out of the College Football Playoff.

There was a lot of talk before the bracket was revealed about who was more deserving: Alabama or SMU? If the committee would have left Bama in, there would have been a lot of conversation about teams being better off skipping their conference championship games. SMU was a lock to make the playoff before the ACC Championship… so if they played in it and lost (which they did, by three points) and were booted out, it might have started a trend where teams declined to play in conference title games.

On the flip side, Alabama had the “we play in the SEC” argument, and boasted a number of quality wins against Top-25 teams. They also lost to Vanderbilt and had an embarrassing blowout loss to Oklahoma late in the season. Many believe their defeat at the hands of the Sooners was what ultimately kept them out, but as you can see in the graphic below, the resumes of the Crimson Tide and the Mustangs were incredibly close:

Poor Alabama.

Wait a second, did I just say? What I meant to say was HALLELUJAH. Too many times, we’ve seen the Crimson Tide squeak into the CFP due to no other fact besides… they’re Alabama. Finally, the College Football Playoff Committee put their foot down and didn’t let a three-loss Bama team into the tournament, and college football fans are rejoicing online:

A beer bottle on a dock

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