Gentlemen, start your spinning. Coaches, athletic directors and conference commissioners are champing at the bit for TV time this week as they make their final pitches to the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.
Alabama, Miami, South Carolina, the SEC, the ACC and the Big 12 have all made their cases to be included – or add more teams – in the field. The No. 11 Crimson Tide stand in the best position heading into Sunday, though No. 17 Clemson's narrow win over No. 8 SMU complicates matters a bit. The Tigers' win gives them the ACC's automatic bid, and the Mustangs' narrow defeat leaves them as a two-loss at-large candidate. To put it in college basketball terms, Clemson may have "stolen" one of the available bids Saturday night.
While schools' athletic directors state their cases to the CFP via appearances on television – something akin to political pundits on cable news, shouting and offering little to sway the general public's stance – the committee has already played their hand. Their penultimate top 25 released this week plotted a course for Alabama, and committee chairman Warde Manuel cleared up further complications when he explained teams not playing this weekend in conference championship games can not jump the Tide in the rankings.
Simply put: Alabama, not the aforementioned schools grasping at straws, will land in the field as the last at-large team if all goes according to plan.
It's possible SMU (11-2) slides behind Alabama (9-3) after the loss, Manuel explained this week. His words careened a frightening shot across the bow of the ACC, still shaking from last year's Florida State snub. A late-season injury to FSU's Jordan Travis sank the ACC last year; strength of schedule may be its undoing in 2024.
SMU, a conference runner-up with only two losses, being punished for playing and losing an extra game while Alabama sits at home? It's a topic for debate, but that's how the world works when a man's intuition is supported by facts.
Many critics have zeroed in on Alabama's three losses, obsessing over an imaginary finite cutoff for the CFP, choosing to ignore the analytics behind the Tide's schedule, efficient performances and quality wins.
Spoiler alert: every line on the Tide's resume screams for inclusion.
Alabama is 3-1 against teams currently ranked in the CFP's top 25 rankings. No. 12 Miami is 0-1 vs. ranked teams and has melted down the stretch, losing two of its last three games overall. SMU is now 0-2 against the top 25.
For all intents and purposes, the committee has built its case to drop the Mustangs below Alabama by dropping Miami (10-2), with a similar record against the top 25, below the Tide following the Hurricanes' loss to Syracuse last week.
The committee's magic number for penalizing losing teams appears to be six. They dropped Miami six spots to No. 12 last week. Alabama fell six spots after losing 24-3 to Oklahoma three weeks ago.
Might SMU experience a similar fall after Saturday?
The committee won't admit it, but as much as this is a debate about two teams, it's also about the strength of two conferences (ACC vs. SEC).
Criticism screams brand bias, and though Alabama's dominance over the last decade is certainly part of the committee's subconscious, what they see on film is more important. In a world dominated by numbers and advanced metrics, something just feels right about including Alabama.
The committee can always explain a decision to include Team A over Team B by citing analytics and head-to-head matchups, but in the end subjectivity wins — and they're always looking for evidence to support their gut.
"I've been a part of championship teams and know what that looks like," Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said earlier this week.
Luckily for the committee, the numbers support their case and Alabama looks the part. The Tide rank fourth nationally in team efficiency while ranking eighth defensively and 11th offensively, according to ESPN's FPI. SMU came into Saturday 11th in team efficiency. The Tide's strength of record is 10th.
More importantly, Alabama's strength of schedule is 17th compared to SMU at No. 75.
"And so that's why it's not two versus three losses," Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne told AL.com. "You need to look at it holistically and I think that's important for the game. The other part is, as we're looking in the future, I do strongly believe that good nonconference games are good for college football. And we have scheduled a bunch of really good home-and-homes for the future. And we should. It should be recognized that, you know, when you play a more challenging schedule, ultimately, you're going to have maybe another loss or two that somebody else doesn't have."
We'll find out together Sunday at Noon ET if the CFP Selection Committee agrees when it releases the 12-team field.
