Alabama, Miami, Ole Miss and South Carolina: Someone is going to get jobbed, but they don't deserve our sympathy

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin posted a screenshot to X.com on Sunday outlining the Rebels’ case to make the College Football Playoff. Nowhere in that screenshot did the word “Kentucky” appear. 

Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne posted the Crimson Tide’s case on social media. Nowhere in his graphic did the word “Vanderbilt” appear. 

Statistics and data are malleable. If you’re trying to make a CFP case using resume bullet points — which coaches and fans from different teams all over the country do at this time of year — it’s easy to pick and choose which data points to use and which ones to exclude to make your team look as attractive as possible. You can make any team look like the right choice if you bend and manipulate the argument enough. It’s politicking, and you understand why people engage in it.

The reality with Ole Miss and Alabama is that they both have compelling cases for CFP candidacy. That’s true, in large part, because they have such similar resumes. Both teams play in the SEC, they have identical records and both own a signature win over Georgia. 

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It’s going to be extremely difficult to choose between them, South Carolina, Miami and (maybe) SMU come Sunday, but that’s exactly what the College Football Playoff Committee is going to have to do. Regardless of what happens in the conference championship games this weekend, there is going to be a raging debate about who should be in and who should be out.

Someone is going to get screwed.

Here’s the kicker, though: the team(s) who get screwed don’t deserve our sympathy. They only have themselves to blame for being in this predicament for reasons that are predictably absent from their politicking attempts. The truth is, teams viable enough to win a national title don’t lose to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma and Kentucky. They just don’t.

When the CFP Committee released their latest rankings Tuesday night — the final edition of these rankings before the bracket comes out in five days — they told us what to expect. SMU was predictably the highest-ranked team at No. 8 with one loss heading into the ACC title game against Clemson, then came Alabama at No. 11, Miami at No. 12, Ole Miss at No. 13 and South Carolina at No. 14.

Because none of those teams play this weekend, it seems highly unlikely that there will be another shakeup before the Playoffs are revealed. Of course, South Carolina’s resume could improve if last weekend’s win over Clemson turns into a victory over the ACC Champ, but that likely won’t be enough to get the Gamecocks into the 12-team field, given they lost to both Alabama and Ole Miss head-to-head and possess the same record.

So, right now, the CFP Committee’s choice is Alabama. Alabama is ranked higher than the teams to which it is being compared. The Crimson Tide has to root like hell for SMU to beat Clemson so there isn’t any further debate come the weekend. If that happens, Alabama is in. But if Clemson beats SMU, you’re going to see more drama and politicking over the weekend in the inevitable SMU-Alabama debate. SMU could very well win that debate.

It doesn’t matter that the Crimson Tide are two weeks removed from going to Oklahoma, failing to score a touchdown and losing to a bad Sooners team. It also didn’t matter that Alabama lost to Vanderbilt. This is the 12-team era, and average teams who wouldn’t even sniff the CFP in the past will wind up with second, third and now fourth chances. Funny enough, it was Alabama who got the final spot, not the little guy we were all told would benefit the most from Playoff expansion.

Ole Miss has every right to be angry and hurt. The Rebels basically did everything Alabama did this year — bad losses included – and have to live with the reality that they aren’t in the field because people in a boardroom in Grapevine, Texas had a hunch or used a random stat to justify their opinion.

The same goes for Miami, who has a better record but fewer quality wins. The Hurricanes shouldn’t have lost to Georgia Tech and Syracuse.

The same goes for South Carolina, who is as hot as anyone in the country right now, but lost to LSU, Ole Miss and Alabama. Had it held on to either the LSU or Alabama games — both of which the Gamecocks could have won — they’d be in. But they didn’t and there are consequences for losing.

These teams don’t deserve our sympathy, even if they have a case for being mistreated.

The real thing we all have to accept, though, is the expanded CFP creates an environment where subjective decisions like the one the committee made between Ole Miss and Alabama are more prevalent.

When teams who are 9-3 are on the edge of getting in, there are more teams with that record than undefeated or 11-1. There was some drama in the four-team era — like last year with Florida State or in 2014 between TCU, Baylor and Ohio State — but the decisions for who got in and who was left out were easier. Why? Because far fewer teams lived up to the standard it took to even be considered.

If it doesn’t sit well with you the committee probably arrived at Alabama on Tuesday by pulling an obscure stat out of their butts and throwing darts at a board to justify their decision, get used to it. This wasn’t a weird year. This is going to be regular. And, frankly, the Committee was — and will continue to be — put in an impossible situation.

If you want to feel bad about something, feel bad about that. Feel bad about the system.

As far as the teams who came up short this year?

Well, they did that to themselves.