Despite its best efforts to be eliminated, Alabama is very much alive in playoff race

Alabama football has not consistently looked like a team that wants to make the College Football Playoff or compete for a national championship. For stretches they have. Like when they beat Georgia in September or dominated LSU in Baton Rouge two weeks ago. But then there's been road losses to Vanderbilt and Tennessee followed up by a complete collapse on the road against Oklahoma.

Tennessee is probably a playoff team, but Vanderbilt and Oklahoma are both five-loss teams. You can't lose to two different five-loss teams and then argue you deserve inclusion in the playoff. Not even at the expanded 12 teams.

And yet, after the dust settled on a chaotic day, and despite its own best efforts to be eliminated, Alabama is still somehow very much alive in the College Football Playoff race.

ESPN's AllState Playoff Predictor gives Alabama a 37% chance of making the playoff. A win next week in the Iron Bowl over Auburn would bump it up to 41%.

ESPN's Heather Dinich and CBS' Jerry Palm have Alabama ranked No. 12 and the first team out in their current playoff projections. Currently, they project the Crimson Tide to be leapfrogged by the Big 12 champion and left out.

Losses by both Ole Miss and Texas A&M helped keep the Crimson Tide alive in the playoff race. It will take someone getting upset in the final weekend of the regular season for Alabama to get back into the field.

Indiana plays at home against Purdue, which is probably the worst power-4 team in the country. They'll likely win that game in a rout. It will get really interesting if either Georgia or Tennessee lose next week. The Bulldogs face a Georgia Tech team that already beat Miami, and the Volunteers will face a dangerous Vanderbilt team fully capable of ruining Tennessee's playoff hopes.

It's hard to argue that Alabama is deserving of a playoff berth. They've had plenty of opportunities to prove it and have self-destructed in the worst moments. But in reality, there are not 12 deserving teams in the country this season. There won't be most seasons. So if Alabama makes it in through the backdoor, they won't apologize.

Of course, for that to even be a possibility Alabama has to take care of business next weekend in the Iron Bowl. And with how Auburn has looked in recent weeks, including an overtime win over No. 15 Texas A&M this weekend, that game seems far more challenging now than it did a few weeks ago.