Ad Disclosure
Wasson: Alabama is out of the Playoff, and it was always supposed to be this way
By David Wasson
Published:
It was always supposed to be this way.
After a week of coast-to-coast hyperventilating, histrionics and hysteria around the penultimate College Football Playoff standings, Sunday finally brought clarity about the Alabama Crimson Tide’s postseason future.
The Tide are out, as the SMU Mustangs earned the final at-large seed – at No. 11 – in the final 12-team Playoff rankings. Alabama is consigned to a meaningless bowl game, while SMU plays at No. 6 seed Penn State in the first round.
It was always supposed to be this way.
The 13 members of the Playoff committee endured the first week of December probably feeling like employing witness protection-level measures based on the hollering coming from … well … everywhere. It seems precisely no one outside Tuscaloosa County thought the Tide deserved to be considered for the field – with arguments ranging from analytical to borderline insanity.
As we opined earlier this week, this Playoff committee hasn’t exactly been Aaron Judge with its slugging percentage up to this point anyway. Plus, judging midseason rankings can always feel a little like gazing over Da Vinci’s shoulder and pointing out slightly errant early brush strokes.
So what if it took the Playoff committee more plates of nachos and pitchers of beer to divine the Lucky 12 to make the first expanded field? And so what if the Playoff committee essentially painted itself into a corner (something Da Vinci never did, incidentally …) by at first ranking Alabama over Miami and then discovering a no-win situation of Alabama or SMU for the final at-large spot?
With the expanded field, strength of schedule has become a heightened argument. The problem with it is that that teams are assigned their conference opponents by the conferences and then fill in their nonconference slate years in advance. That means teams like SMU are already locked into their schedules well before they know if they are going to be any good or not – and can do precisely bupkus about it once the season begins and their postseason fates get tied to it.
In other words, you play who gets put in front of you. And logic surely tells you that all wins (and losses) are not equal. That value matrix goes both ways – as Alabama (SOS of 16) drew an above-average SEC slate with plenty of Top 25 opposition, while SMU (SOS of 60) didn’t exactly play a crushing ACC schedule this season. So the SOS edge definitely would go to a 9-3 Tide resume over an 11-2 Mustangs resume.
If you’re going to value strength of schedule, though, you kinda must discount earning a championship game berth – and that goes against the institutional point of the entire process. Why even play in your championship game (and lose to a last-second Clemson field goal like SMU did …) if the possibility exists that it will be a negative data point? We already saw a glimmer of that last year, too, as FSU got dinged out of the 4-team Playoff partially because they were an offensive hot mess against Louisville in the ACC title game after losing star quarterback Jordan Travis weeks earlier.
Because there are 134 teams theoretically vying for 12 Playoff spots when the season begins, there’s no logical way to make this like the NFL Playoffs – or like the NCAA Tournament, which has 68 spots available for 352 teams but can play multiple games within a week. Geography, tradition and billions in TV revenue will never be able to truly put SMU on the measurement as Alabama.
By the way, even with a future expansion to 16 Playoff teams there will always be a gripe at the delineation line marking “in” and “out.” The Joe Lunardis of the Bracketology world need to eat, too, and what the heck else would we be whining about right now if everything was completely fair?
In an odd way, the College Football Playoff mirrors life like that. There are very things steadfast (Oregon being perhaps the only one …), and almost limitless shades of gray to try and decide what is “best.” That’s why the Playoff committee gets all those nachos and pitchers of beer, right?
Cycling this back to Alabama, the case has been now set – in the same concrete that captains affix their hand and footprints at the base of Denny Chimes – that you simply cannot lose to middling programs like Vanderbilt and Oklahoma and expect the red carpet to be rolled out. Alabama was at mercy’s fate the second Sooners fans prematurely stormed the field (the latest of 3 times that happened this season, incidentally …) and knocked the Tide out of SEC Championship Game contention.
Southern mommas always say that you get what you get and you don’t fuss a bit. Hoopers from the park to the NBA will tell you that ball don’t lie. And those in Nashville and Norman already told you that if you can’t get past them, you’re destined for mediocrity.
For Alabama, it’s just that simple.
It was always supposed to be this way.
An APSE national award-winning writer and page designer, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
