Alabama Football: How bittersweet the Sugar Bowl was

The 2022 Alabama Football season ended in a way to which the Crimson Tide is not accustomed. It is not that the Sugar Bowl win was not sweet – but it was also bittersweet. Alabama ends its season as one of college football’s best teams and certainly one of the four best.

That is not to claim the Alabama Crimson Tide was Playoff-worthy. Losing two games and failing to reach a conference championship game was fairly deemed disqualifying.

At one point, picking college football’s four best teams was the primary goal of the CFB Playoff Selection Committee. That goal quickly faded and the Playoffs ceased to be about the four best teams. In the same way, the expanded Playoff format will not be about picking the 12 best teams.

The problem for the committee is not that so many teams in every season deserve to be in the field. The problem is, season after season only two or three are deserving, making it hard to pick a number four when numbers five, six, or even seven have legitimate claims.

After the National Championship is won, Alabama football fans can proclaim the Crimson Tide was the nation’s second or third-best team. Tennessee fans can make the same claim. Neither team would have been Playoff frauds.

With TCU beating Michigan, it must be asked how good were the previously undefeated Wolverines. More precisely, does the TCU win vindicate the Horned Frogs were one of the four best teams?

TCU lost to Kansas State in the Big 12 Championship game. Alabama coasted through the fourth quarter of the Sugar Bowl and still beat KSU by 25 points after Tide backups allowed KSU a late-game score.

Alabama Football or TCU?

Did anyone on the CFB Playoff Selection Committee pose a  certain question about TCU? Could the Horned Frogs have won in Knoxville or Baton Rouge? If the question was asked, any affirmative answers given were wrong. The two best road wins for TCU were over 8-5 Texas and 7-5 SMU. The other TCU road wins were over 1-11, Colorado; 5-7, West Virginia; 6-7, Kansas and 6-7, Baylor.

Nick Saban posed a correct question a few weeks ago. When commenting on whether the Crimson Tide should be included in the final four, Nick Saban said,

"If we played any of these teams that are on the edge of getting in, would we be the underdog? Or would we be the favorite?"

The CFB Selection Committee does not use the opinion of oddsmakers to rank teams. Nor should the committee, but the question was a fair one and every Alabama football fan knows the Crimson Tide would have been favored over TCU.

TCU may win it all. If they do, hats off to them. A win by the Horned Frogs would be good for college football, despite Alabama, with a healthy Bryce Young, having a better team.