Warde Manuel admits he doesn’t know how close final Alabama vs. SMU vote was
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Warde Manuel and the College Football Playoff committee had their hands full after a wild Championship Weekend.
Instead of getting some chalk in the conference championship games, Clemson upset SMU on a walk-off field goal to grab an automatic bid into the field of 12. That created a debate between the Mustangs and 3-loss Alabama with SMU eventually landing the spot.
That decision set off a reaction of equal pushback and support from fans of college football. SMU won 11 games and played for an ACC title, but Alabama’s schedule was much stronger with the Tide securing more ranked wins.
So, just how close was the final vote inside the committee room between SMU and Alabama? ESPN’s Rece Davis asked Manuel, the chair of the CFP committee, that exact question on Sunday.
Remarkably, Manuel said he doesn’t even know how close the vote was at the end. That’s because Manuel himself doesn’t see the actual vote per his own admission.
“Here’s the beauty of the process: I don’t know. I don’t know how many (members) would have had to change their mind (to get Alabama in) because I’m a member of the committee and I have a vote,” said Manuel. “I’m leading the committee and talking about the process and what we need to go through and making sure people are committed to opening the conversation and talking about how they see things.”
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It’s a bit of a confusing admission from Manuel because it begs the question: Who actually sees the final vote? He reiterated one more time that he doesn’t know exactly how every member of the committee votes but had to guess that things were “very very close” between the two teams based on the spirited discussion involved.
“But what I don’t see is the actual vote, and I don’t always have this sense of how people voted and who voted for what unless someone in the conversation says ‘This is how I see it.’ So I don’t know how close,” Manuel said in regard to the final vote. “My assumption is that it would be really close. This is not something we took lightly. The arguments, discussion in the room were passionate back and forth… without knowing, I would say it was very very close.”
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
