Alabama, after years of acing the eye test, needs to worry if compared to Miami and Notre Dame

Shortly before the SEC Championship kicked off Saturday, I said the only way Alabama could be left out of the College Football Playoff would be if the Crimson Tide lost to Georgia by 40 in Atlanta.

Alabama lost 28-7. But it felt like 40. Or maybe 50.

The Crimson Tide got so thoroughly clobbered that it called into question whether Alabama will remain ranked high enough to snare one of the seven at-large spots. Alabama has some of the best wins of any CFP contender — including a win at Georgia on Sept. 27 — but the Tide also bookended their season with no-doubt-about-it losses. (The first was in week one at Florida State, and the Seminoles finished 5-7.) Further complicating matters is a raging debate between 10-2 Notre Dame and 10-2 Miami that we presumed would be over the final at-large spot.

The committee could end that particular debate Sunday by placing Notre Dame and Miami in the nine and 10 spots (in any order) and by ranking Alabama behind those two. That would start another debate as to whether Alabama should have been punished for earning its way into the SEC title game. Had Alabama’s season ended last week as presumed at-large teams Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Oklahoma’s seasons ended, Alabama would have been in the field.

This is the part where BYU fans also will complain that their team is being punished for earning its way into a conference title game. The Cougars lost 34-7 to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game on Saturday. The difference is Saturday’s game was almost a carbon copy of BYU’s 29-7 loss at Texas Tech on Nov. 11.

As previously mentioned, Alabama won at Georgia when the teams met in September. 

We’ve repeated for the past month that teams didn’t get punished last year for losing their conference title games. But teams did get punished. Penn State and Texas each fell one spot for losing the Big Ten and SEC title games. SMU fell two spots for losing to Clemson in the ACC title game. The difference is none of those drops knocked a team out of the field. If Alabama drops two spots, it’s out. If it only drops one, it remains.

Teams also got punished for losing conference title games in the four-team era. In 2017, Auburn beat Georgia and Alabama but lost to LSU in the regular season. The Tigers entered the SEC title game against Georgia ranked No. 2. They lost 28-7 (sounds familiar) to the Bulldogs and fell to No. 7 in the final ranking. Georgia and Alabama made the four-team field and wound up playing for the national title.

The 2025 Tide are trending down at the moment, and the committee must decide if Alabama deserves a spot in the field. And while there are some guidelines for selection, committee members have fairly wide latitude to decide how they want to rank the teams. They can weigh the quality of wins with the horror of losses and decide which teams are most deserving. They could also consider factors such as Alabama missing top back Jam Miller and top tight end Josh Cuevas.

But if committee members want, they can simply select the teams they think would fare best in the CFP. We’ve always called that the eye test, and Alabama has been the beneficiary of the eye test throughout the CFP era. From 2014 on

But the Tide need to hope the committee members choose option A and not the eye test. Because Alabama and BYU probably fail that test against Miami and Notre Dame at this moment. 

Even before Saturday’s loss, Notre Dame (No. 5) and Miami (No. 6) ranked above Alabama (No. 7) in the Sagarin Ratings. (Alabama was ahead of Georgia, Texas A&M and Ole Miss prior to Saturday’s game.) In ESPN quant Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings after the games of last week, Alabama (No. 12) ranked behind Notre Dame (No. 5) and Miami (No. 9). 

Using advanced stats guru Parker Fleming’s matchup generator prior to the SEC title game, Miami would have been a four-point favorite against Alabama on a neutral field. Notre Dame would have been a six-point favorite against the Tide on a neutral field. And that was before Alabama rushed for minus-3 yards on 16 carries (with a long run of five yards) against the Bulldogs.

In other words, if this were Indiana or Ole Miss and not Alabama with a similar profile, the case for the CFP wouldn’t look good. But it is Alabama, and the question is whether Alabama’s wins against Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Tennessee outweigh the losses to Florida State, Oklahoma and Georgia.

Everyone will have an opinion. But the opinions of 12 people in a room in Grapevine, Texas, will be the only ones that matter.

We’ll learn what they decided at noon ET on Sunday.