SEC bowl projections after Week 13: What now for Bama?

Saturday answered a fair number of questions regarding bowl destinations for SEC teams, but raised a whole bunch of new ones.

First things first: What about Alabama? That’s really going to be the topic on everybody’s mind.

The rest of the conference is not that complicated for bowl projections. For Auburn and Georgia, who meet in next week’s SEC title game, it’s easy. The winner is in the College Football Playoff, the loser goes to some other New Year’s Day 6 bowl (probably the Peach).

LSU seems like a pretty obvious Citrus Bowl candidate as the best SEC team outside of the CFP and other NYD6 bowls. Texas A&M, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Kentucky and Missouri will fill out the next tier in some order. Everybody else waits until next year (more on that later).

But, oh, the Crimson Tide. What now?

Will coach Nick Saban’s team miss the Playoff for the first time since the CFP began in 2014? Will the CFP committee rank Bama above its fellow one-loss SEC team, Georgia? Does it matter since the Bulldogs will either beat Auburn and make the CFP or lose and get out of the Tide’s way?

A better question: Will the rankings have Alabama above undefeated Wisconsin? And if not, would a Big Ten championship game win over Ohio State push Wisconsin into the Playoff at Alabama’s expense?

Here’s one thing we know heading into Tuesday’s next CFP rankings release: We. Just. Don’t. Know. But we have to guess something, so the guess here is that Wisconsin beats Ohio State — I am a native Buckeye and I am very familiar with how flawed this OSU team is — and that keeps Alabama out whether the Crimson Tide is ranked ahead of the Badgers this week or not. Next Saturday, Alabama fans should root hard for Ohio State, as well as TCU against Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. Maybe Miami too, except the Hurricanes could vault Bama with a win over Clemson in the ACC title game.

As for life at the other end of the SEC standings? We wrote before about Vanderbilt’s hopes to make a bowl at 5-7 thanks to its high APR score.

The good news for Commodores fans? Vandy ended its season with a victory over Tennessee to reach that five-win mark.

The bad news? None of it mattered. This weekend had four games with two 5-6 teams playing each other, with the winners becoming bowl eligible. Purdue, UCLA, Middle Tennessee State and Utah won those. But the weekend also saw Duke, Buffalo, Temple, Louisiana Tech and Texas Tech earn their sixth victories.

Long story short, there are 79 bowl-eligible teams for 78 berths (with up to three more joining next week), so Vandy and all the other 5-7 teams are out. Thus, the SEC will fall well short of filling all of its spots.