Already, the worst 2026 college football postseason prediction has been provided by On3 and Brett McMurphy. In such an early prediction, accuracy is obviously not the goal. The goal is sizzle, and McMurphy's Alabama Crimson Tide prediction is equivalent to a grease fire.
McMurphy risks the ire of more than Alabama fans. Along with the Crimson Tide, McMurphy has Tennessee, LSU, Missouri, and Ole Miss failing to make the next 12-team playoff field. Unsurprisingly, Auburn, Florida, and South Carolina are also not on his list of playoff teams.
McMurphy predicts the Vols will play SMU in the Gator Bowl; Auburn will play Kansas State in the Texas Bowl; Missouri will play Oklahoma State in the Birmingham Bowl; Ole Miss will play Nebraska in the Music City Bowl; LSU will play Penn State in the Citrus Bowl; and South Carolina will play Houston in the Liberty Bowl.
What about the Alabama Crimson Tide?
The postseason prediction for the Crimson Tide is the Duke's Mayo Bowl against Louisville. The game location in Charlotte is not onerous, but the city makes the bowl itself no less ignominious. To promote the game's title sponsor, Duke's Mayo, the winning coach has a bucket of mayonnaise dumped on his head. That anyone would consider the spectacle anything but demeaning is mind-boggling.
If McMurphy's prediction came true, some Alabama football fans might pull for Louisville to spare Kalen DeBoer the embarrassing mayo dumping. Then again, if Alabama's postseason is the Duke's Mayo Bowl, the Tide's head coach for the game would likely be an interim rather than DeBoer.
Would the above be an all-time postseason low for the Alabama Crimson Tide? There are a couple of Sun Bowl trips in the 1980s that might be considered the worst, along with a 1998 Music City Bowl beatdown by Virginia Tech.
Most wide shots from inside Sun Bowl Stadium show a couple of scrabbly hills in the background. It makes the site look remote, but the edge of El Paso is not an isolated area. About four football fields away, across I-10, the CanAm Highway, and the Rio Grande and Bravas rivers, is Juarez, Mexico. It is not a setting for college football success stories. Alabama beat SMU there in 1983, 28-7. It was the first post-Bear season, when Ray Perkins learned that even a one-season honeymoon was not to be. In 1988, in Bill Curry's second season, Alabama beat Army 29-28. Even with the wins, the Sun Bowls depressed Alabama football fans for how far the Crimson Tide had fallen.
Alabama in a Duke's Mayo Bowl game would be in contention for the Crimson Tide's worst -ever postseason.
Note: Alabama bowl history provided by Sports Reference