Alabama left the College Football Selection Committee with a tough question on Saturday. Do quality wins matter more than subpar losses? It’s a tough question. On the one hand, SMU. 11-2, fresh off of losing to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game and lacking a ranked win. On the other, Alabama, 9-3 with two losses to .500 teams, while playing one of the toughest schedules in the country.
For Alabama, the answer was simple: Our strength of schedule should put us in. Alabama had the No.17 strength of schedule, a 3-1 record against ranked opponents, and went 1-1 against teams that made the playoffs. Regarding the eye test, Alabama’s big wins proved that the Crimson Tide was the better team. The argument was moot from the Crimson Tide’s perspective.
But missing from Alabama’s argument was the fact that Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, both 6-6 on the year, were ugly losses.
To Alabama’s credit, the Playoff Committee had made exceptions for ugly losses before. In 2017, Clemson got the playoff nod despite a loss to Syracuse, who went 4-8 that season. In 2015, Oklahoma lost to a Texas team that went 5-7. In the four-team playoff period, three times, teams that made the playoff had a loss to a sub-.500 teams, and under the 12-team playoff format, teams were supposed to have even more leeway for those inexplicable losses.
Some teams in this year's playoffs got that leeway. BIG-12 Champion Arizona State had a loss to 5-7 Cincinnati, Tennessee lost to 6-6 Arkansas, and Notre Dame, the victim of one of the biggest upsets of the year, lost to a 7-5 Northern Illinois. But Alabama stood apart. For Notre Dame, that was their only loss on the year, Tennessee had one other loss to Georgia, and Arizona State earned their bid with a conference win. No one else asked for forgiveness on three losses.
While there are arguments for and against Alabama, the Crimson Tide’s biggest problem is the Selection Committee’s process is objective in a game increasingly driven by analytics. It seems crazy to say, but while we know a win against Georgia, the eventual SEC Champion, is bigger than a win over Duke, we don’t take into account just how much better it is.
Looking at the Committee’s process for comparable teams (teams that don’t earn a bid with a conference title), the selection is based on championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, comparative outcomes of common opponents, and other relevant factors. In theory, these factors frequently favor schools like Alabama, who play in tougher conferences, but even these assessments are subjective.
The idea that one team is better than another will always be subjective in College Football. The league is too big for every team to play one another, and with the way teams are spread across the country, it’s difficult to draw common opponents and make even comparisons. Hence, the eye test in College Football.
In 2024, the game has changed, and the amount of information we collect and can base our assessments on has grown. In the NFL, where teams are grounded by a semblance of parity, it makes sense to determine the best teams based on a win-loss record. For the college game, that’s not going to be enough.
Since gambling became a major part of sports around the country, there has been a push to quantify every aspect of the game in the name of creating better competition. While the over-under may not always be right, the data that leads to this information isn’t. The same thing applies to ESPN’s calculation of strength of schedule and strength of record; they may not always show who is a clear-cut better team, but when you look at the math around it, there is a quantifiable value to who you play.
At the end of the day, as long as the selection process remains objective, there are going to be winners and losers, some sore, some not. But the numbers won’t lie. I’m not a statistician, and I can’t say what the exact best value of every component would be or even what each component would be.
The role of the Playoff Committee needs to change. The first criteria shouldn’t be what they think but what the math says is the best team, and then the Committee should approve and verify the conclusions that data reaches.
Going to the ACC or cutting power-four nonconference games won’t fix the issues facing Alabama in the selection process. Fixing the process will.