The CFB Playoff Selection Committee may need extra courage on Sunday. Until then, some on the committee may be secretly rooting for SMU to beat Clemson. A win by the Tigers over SMU would put the committee in a difficult situation.
Choosing between an 11-2 SMU team and a 9-3 Alabama Football team should be fairly simple. All the committee has to do is revisit its decision when it measured the Crimson Tide and the Miami Hurricanes. The Mustangs would have nearly the same blemishes on their resume as the Canes.
Unfortunately, the potential Alabama vs. SMU decision will not be so simple. The committee previously said that teams would not be punished for making a conference championship game and losing. For multiple reasons, the current Playoff format established staunch support for the importance of conference championship games. Is that support so locked in the committee will fear the backlash from picking a 9-3 Alabama over an 11-2 SMU?
Alabama football fans don't like a recent opinion from Greg McElroy, but the former Crimson Tide QB was not wrong. McElroy said, "... if the committee punishes SMU for playing that 13th game, I do think that is a dangerous precedent to set knowing the value of conference championship games to the sport, and I just don’t know if the committee’s real comfortable with doing that at the moment."
McElroy is correct that a decision by the committee that diminishes the incentive to play in a conference championship game could have broad effects. Going to a format with no auto-bids would be a logical response, but most conference commissioners would again fight that structure.
Some Good News for Alabama Football Fans
Some good news for Alabama football fans is that Joel Klatt gave the Selection Committee some cover to select Alabama over SMU. On his podcast, Klatt said, "Bama, their strength of schedule, far greater than SMU’s: 17th in the country vs. SMU’s being 75. I think that just honoring the fact that they got to their conference championship is not enough. Because in this era of superconferences, not every path to a conference championship game is equal. So, you’ve got to evaluate the path and SMU’s path was very favorable, and that’s to put it lightly."
The Selection Committee might be in a precarious situation. Should Clemson beat SMU, the committee must face making the right ranking decision of dropping SMU below Alabama; while knowing that doing so will feed the building frenzy that teams should opt out of conference championship games. The path of least resistance would be choosing SMU over Alabama. Would the committee have the backbone to do otherwise?