10 weeks ago, Kalen DeBoer led Alabama into Athens and beat Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs between the hedges. The win propelled DeBoer to 2-0 against Georgia in his brief tenure in Tuscaloosa, and dropped Kirby Smart to 1-7 against Alabama.
I promise that happened, but after Georgia’s 28-7 drubbing of Alabama at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the SEC Title on Saturday, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me. The No. 9 Crimson Tide entered the game banged up, missing starting running back Jam Miller, starting tight end Josh Cuevas, and starting left guard Kam Dewberry, and left bludgeoned.
So, now the question becomes, will the Crimson Tide make the 12-team College Football Playoff, or for the second-straight year will DeBoer miss out with three losses?
Alabama did the one thing it couldn’t do in the SEC Championship Game
The Big Ten and SEC are the biggest power players in the College Football Playoff, and – excuse me for speculating – both conferences thoroughly enjoy the payday they get from their neutral-site conference championship games. So, it would stand to reason that the CFP committee would not want to do anything to jeopardize those games and kill the conference cash cows.
Because if a team like Alabama were in the field and were to be knocked out, it would have been better for them not to play in the conference title game, which could lead schools to push the league to abolish them.
With that in mind, you can figure that if a team is in the CFP field heading into the conference championship game, it won’t be knocked out for losing an extra game that other at-large teams didn’t have to play. That’s what happened last season when SMU lost to Clemson and still made the field.
The caveat that is always mentioned when discussing the possibility of a team being punished for playing an additional game is ‘as long as they don’t get blown out.’ Well, Alabama went to Atlanta and got blown out.
It wasn’t just the 28-7 lead on the scoreboard. Georgia outgained Alabama 297-182 while holding the Crimson Tide to -3 rushing yards, continuing its run game struggles that this CFP committee has been peculiarly infatuated with throughout this season.
Georgia has rounded into championship shape while Alabama has limped to the finish line, and left the door open to do something that seemed unimaginable in the 12-team format: leave the SEC runner-up out of the field.
Especially with BYU losing, which keeps another at-large spot open, it’s still hard to imagine the committee dropping Alabama from the field. The team still has the single best win of the entire season, beating Georgia, the highest-ranked one-loss team, on the road, and managed an SEC gauntlet with just one loss. But Saturday’s performance opened the door, and that was the one thing that the Tide couldn’t afford to do.