Heading into this weekend’s games there are a lot of teams theoretically in contention for a playoff berth, including Alabama football. Realistically though, who are the pretenders and who are the contenders to win a National Championship?
I have always been a realist. I am an Alabama football fan through and through, but if I legitimately believe Alabama football will lose a game I won’t hesitate to say so. That outlook persists into college football, and sports, as a whole.
Central Florida can make up fake national championships all they want, but objectively they were not a playoff team in 2017 or 2018. Should they have gotten a chance in the playoff? That is debatable.
If you follow the letter of the rules laid out for the selection committee then the answer is no. The committee’s job is to get the four best teams, not the four most deserving as notorious SEC and Alabama football hater Danny Kanell and some other national pundits want to believe. (I mean no hate. I respect many of Mr. Kanell’s opinions)
As much hate as Kirk Herbstreit gets for some of his takes he seems to be the national analyst that most understands what the job of the selection committee is. Four best. End of discussion.
Week 7 took care of a LOT of pretenders and brought into question some of the teams I thought were contenders but may just be pretenders (Georgia?). Week 8 is set up to be another weed out week, where contenders are tested and pretenders are exposed.
As of today, I believe there are 19 teams that have a legitimate chance, albeit in some cases a very small chance, to make the College Football Playoff. I’m going to talk a little about each of their chances, predict their final regular season record, and tell you whether they are a contender or a pretender.