Booger McFarland questions if SEC Championship win puts Alabama in CFP
Conference championship week is upon us, as the top two teams from each conference across the nation will square off in what should be a memorable weekend of college football.
Each conference championship game at the Power Five level comes with major College Football Playoff implications, and the highly anticipated SEC Championship game between Georgia and Alabama may have the biggest playoff implications of them all.
Georgia will be looking to keep their spot secure in the College Football Playoff as the nation’s top-ranked team, while Alabama will look to carve out a top-four spot for themselves from the outside looking in. But analyst Booger McFarland revealed on ESPN’s ‘Monday Blitz’ with Michael Eaves and Herm Edwards that he’s worried a conference title win won’t be enough for the Crimson Tide to advance to the CFP.
“Even if Alabama wins I don’t know if they get in, here’s why,” McFarland said. “Alabama has a Texas problem.”
“It’d be hard to put them above Texas when Texas beat them head to head?” Eaves asked.
“No question about it,” McFarland replied. “Alabama, even if they win, and I know it sounds blasphemous from an SEC guy and a guy that has roots in the south that the SEC champion, the best conference in the country, you could win that conference and get left out. But under this system, there’s only four and all the games count and Alabama had a Texas problem going back to the second week in September.”
There’s no question that the College Football Playoff Selection Committee will have its hands full following conference championship weekend, with seven of the nation’s top eight teams participating and bound to help or hurt their resumes in the process.
McFarland believes that certain teams winning this weekend will secure their spot in the College Football Playoff, which would still leave the committee with a tough decision to make following an SEC Championship game win for Alabama because of their 10-point home loss to the Longhorns in Week 2 of the season.
“Well in that situation let’s take the obvious,” McFarland started. “Florida State, Michigan, Oregon wins, and then it comes down between Texas and Bama, Texas won the head-to-head. Texas’ll get in, Bama doesn’t get in that situation in my opinion. That sounds crazy right Mike?”
There’s no telling what a Georgia loss on Saturday would mean regarding the College Football Playoff picture, not to mention a ton of other dominoes that could fall this weekend depending on the outcomes of the other conference title games.
But Alabama even having a remote chance of making the cut all starts with a win on Saturday, as they’ll take on the Bulldogs at 4:00 p.m. ET in the SEC Championship game airing on CBS.