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Paul Finebaum predicts Alabama will miss the College Football Playoff in 2024
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Paul Finebaum was all over Alabama football on his weekly Sunday morning appearance on “The Matt Barrie Show,” and not in a favorable way like he often was throughout the Nick Saban era.
Instead, Finebaum took 1st-year head coach Kalen DeBoer and the Crimson Tide program he took over in January to task. After an unfathomable Week 6 loss at Vanderbilt, it was conventional wisdom that an angry Alabama team would return to Tuscaloosa and punish South Carolina.
Well, it didn’t punish anybody on Saturday except its fans, who normally live a charmed life at Crimson Tide home games but instead got treated to a close game that ultimately ended with a 27-25 victory that for most was a victory in name only.
Finebaum was chief among the critics, and on Sunday the ESPN college football analyst predicted that Alabama wouldn’t even make the College Football Playoff, which is heresy considering the Playoff is 12 teams for the 1st time ever and offers a considerable margin for error never seen in previous years.
“I don’t see how the Alabama team I saw (Saturday) can go to LSU and win. The game in Knoxville against Tennessee, I have to think Tennessee … this team just doesn’t look like a Playoff team,” said Finebaum.
Finebaum’s words will immediately be put to the test this Saturday when Alabama makes that trip to Knoxville for the Third Saturday in October rivalry game against the Volunteers. As for Alabama making the Playoff, we won’t know that until December, of course.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
