Alabama Football: What will be lost after the 2023 season

The end of the 2023 college football season will be a watershed moment for the game. For Alabama Football and other elite programs, beginning in 2024, a couple of regular-season losses will not derail championship dreams.

SEC Football will change considerably in the 2024 season, with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas. In the future no-division SEC landscape, a two-loss, third-place regular-season team will still have a good chance to make the 12-team Playoffs.

One projection from Yahoo Sports took the results of the 2022 regular season and conference championships to define a 12-team Playoff field. The SEC got three of the 12 teams and the two-loss Crimson Tide was the No. 7 seed.

Does this suggest college football, like college basketball, will become a tournament sport? Certainly, it will not be exactly the same. Proportionately, college basketball’s NCAA Tournament post-season involves more teams at nearly 19% of all Division One teams. The expanded college football playoff format will include only 9% of the FBS teams.

What will likely change for Alabama Football and every other potential CFB Playoff contender is the value quality losses. In the 2024 season, Alabama could lose two games, fail to reach the SEC Championship game, and still make the Playoff. But if one of the two losses was to Western Kentucky, USF, or the worst SEC team it plays, the Tide’s playoff chances could take a major hit.

Another question is will teams, in an effort to pad a potential two-loss resume, be forced to run up scores when winning games? If chasing blowouts becomes more common, there are downsides for the losing and winning teams. Nick Saban is no fan of embarrassing other teams. Will Saban and the Alabama Football program be forced to adjust? And what would that do to the development of second and third-unit players?

Alabama Football to win a Revenge Game

In an interesting piece by Raymond Lucas Jr., ten teams were predicted to win revenge games in the 2023 season. The Alabama Crimson Tide over the Tennessee Vols was one of them.

Lucas added a broader point worthy of contemplation.

"Few things in life are sweeter than revenge and there will be plenty of that throughout the 2023 season…… With the College Football Playoff set to expand in 2024, revenge will fade because teams can afford to suffer more losses than before. Bitterness can be a poor personality trait, but it’ll be missed in college football when that change is made."

Long-established rivalries should sustain revenge motivations. No matter how the 2024 (and beyond) SEC schedule is structured, it is hard to imagine an Alabama football fan ever thinking a loss to Auburn, Tennessee, LSU or Georgia does not much matter.

One more thought on the 247Sports story written by Lucas; it includes a photo of Steve Sarkisian. Despite being a fan of the Sark, I must say he looks ridiculous in a cowboy hat.