Alabama has golden chance to make CFP gift the right one
By David Wasson
Published:
There are many, perhaps most, in this great country of ours who saw Sunday’s College Football Playoff bracket reveal and thought to themselves “There goes Alabama again, getting an early Christmas gift by being let in…”
Admittedly, your humble scribe is in that camp – as I believed and still believe the Crimson Tide effectively played their way out of the 12-team CFP field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Saturday night. Alabama looked middling at best, wandering at worst, and most definitely not of Playoff caliber against the SEC champion Georgia Bulldogs.
But here’s the thing about sports: Bad calls made by humans are a part of the process, and now it is up to Alabama to prove the many, perhaps most, that we were very much wrong about Alabama belonging in the 2025 CFP field.
The 10-3 Crimson Tide will now spend the next 11 days preparing for an Oklahoma Sooners team they already know very well, having played the Sooners less than a month ago. Of course, said 23-21 loss at Bryant-Denny Stadium was part of the reason the Tide were hat-in-hand in front of the CFP selection committee in the first place.
That sun-splashed afternoon was one of the stranger ones of the season for Alabama, in that the Tide almost doubled up Oklahoma in offensive yards and owned the football for almost 9 more minutes than the Sooners. But the combination of 3 Alabama turnovers, the first glimpses of Ty Simpson instability, missed Tide field goals and dodgy special teams was good enough for Oklahoma to pull the upset for a second-straight season.
Alabama had finally gotten wet after an 8-game run of dancing between the raindrops that day, but without knowing it the Tide also got all the prep tape it could possibly need for the upcoming CFP first-round test.
And because nearly all the mistakes that cost Alabama its second regular season loss on Nov. 15 are correctable issues, not to mention the next 11 days are vitally important to get assets like running back Jam Miller, tight end Josh Cuevas and defensive lineman LT Overton healthy, the Alabama that trots out to take on the Sooners in Norman will likely be a far more dangerous unit that the one that tucked tail in Atlanta.
Naturally, Oklahoma will want a word about that. Quarterback John Mateer appears completely healed from midseason hand surgery and the Sooners gritted their way through season-ending victories against No. 22 Mizzou and LSU by a combined 14 points. Coach Brent Venables’ defense hasn’t gone anywhere, either, as the Sooners own the 7th-best scoring defense in the nation allowing just 13.9 points per game.
Should Alabama get out of Norman without being run over by the Sooner Schooner – literally or figuratively – No. 1 Indiana (that still feels foreign to type…) beckons in the Rose Bowl.
That New Year’s Day matchup in Pasadena would actually be more unique to the Hoosiers than the Crimson Tide. Why? Because it has been 58 years since Indiana last played in Padadena (a 14-3 loss to USC in the 1968 Rose Bowl).
Alabama, on the other hand, has played in Pasadena twice in the 21st century – downing Texas 37-21 to win the program’s 13th national title in 2010 and again in the 2024 CFP semifinals (a 27-20 loss to eventual champion Michigan in Nick Saban’s final coaching appearance). Heck, the Rose Bowl is even mentioned in the team’s fight song Yea Alabama.
In other words, an Alabama-Indiana Rose Bowl would darn near feel like a home game for the Crimson Tide.
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Such a scenario alongside the Arroyo Seco is still a ways off, naturally, as Alabama’s record ninth CFP berth gets rolling Dec. 19 with a prime-time test against a fellow blue-blood college football program. Alabama is just 2-5-1 all time against Oklahoma – only winning a couple of Orange Bowls against the Sooners and tumbling in both ventures to Norman.
“You spend an entire offseason working for this,” Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said after his team received the CFP good news. “You spend countless hours and you have all these games in the regular season, the ups and downs, the emotions within a game, the SEC schedule and everything there, last night and it all adds up to this moment.”
And how will Dec. 19 be different from Nov. 15 for Alabama?
“Every game is its own game” DeBoer said. “You learn from it. We understand them. They understand us. This third time meeting in a little over a year, it’s going to be a physical game. Hard fought. I know it’s going to be an awesome environment on a Friday night to kick off the playoffs.”
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, 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. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
