Alabama football left no shortage of doubt on Saturday. The Crimson Tide is in danger of not making the College Football Playoff after losing 28-7 in the SEC championship game against Georgia.
Now, UA has to wait. Not extremely long though, as the CFP selection committee will make its final decisions and reveal the field on Sunday.
When the committee finishes its work, ESPN will reveal the 12-team bracket on the air. The CFP selection show is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. CT Sunday on the Worldwide Leader.
After the loss on Saturday, Alabama coaches and players made their pitch for entry into the field.
“If this game applies to and takes away from our résumé, I don’t think that’s right,” Kalen DeBoer said after the game. “I really don’t. I think the precedence has been set. I don’t know how you can go into a conference playoff game when you’re the No. 1 seed, did all these things throughout the year, and playing in this game against one of the top teams in the country, as well, how that can hurt you and keep you out of the playoff? Again, we’ve done what we’ve done all year.”
Alabama’s issue will be how uncompetitive it looked against a real playoff team. Sure, it beat the Bulldogs earlier this year in Athens, a win no other team in America has, but late in the year, the Crimson Tide faded.
Miami and Notre Dame were idle on Saturday, with the Hurricanes not making the ACC championship game and the Irish not having a conference at all. However, both teams will argue they should jump past Alabama on eye test alone, not to mention UA having a third loss now.
Alabama’s point will be that it went 7-1 in SEC play during the regular season.
“I think that our résumé speaks to itself,” quarterback Ty Simpson said. “We went through a gauntlet of a schedule. SEC is the best conference in the country. That’s a really good team. That’s pretty much simple as that, right? We went through a tough schedule and we’re the most resilient team in the country. Everything, our résumé, speaks for itself.”
