College Football Playoff: Comparing resumes of Alabama, SMU before Selection Sunday

It’s finally Selection Sunday for the College Football Playoff. There’s one major question that the selection committee is looking to answer too. Should the Alabama Crimson Tide or the SMU Mustangs make it to the Playoff?

The other teams in the field seem to be jockeying for seed, rather than if they made the Playoff. With that, it appears that there’s one spot left in the new 12-team field and, based on the previous rankings and the results in the conference championship games. That’s coming down to Alabama and SMU, who both seem to have good arguments to make it to the Playoff.

So, ahead of those final rankings, ESPN broke down the resume for each of Alabama and SMU on SportsCenter, highlighting four key factors.

Alabama
Strength of Record: 9th
Game Control: 6th
FPI: 6th
Strength of Schedule: 16th

SMU
Strength of Record: 15th
Game Control: 12th
FPI: 13th
Strength of Schedule: 60

SMU, an ACC team, finished the season 11-2, losing the ACC Championship Game on a last-second field goal to Clemson. Their other loss was to a 10-win BYU team early in the season. Now there’s some question about if the loss to Clemson would be enough to drop them out of the Playoff field.

For Alabama’s part, the Crimson Tide finished the regular season at 9-3 and missed out on the SEC Championship Game. All of their losses came in SEC play, against Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. They also have a marquee win over conference champion Georgia. Wins over South Carolina and Missouri are also very well regarded for the Crimson Tide.

In each of the key metrics that ESPN shared on SportsCenter, Alabama has the higher ranking over SMU. The one that stands out the most is the Strength of Schedule metric, where the Mustangs are 60th in the country, reflecting being in the ACC and playing that schedule compared to how the SEC schedule is regarded.

Despite that, analyst Paul Finebaum still took a grim outlook on Alabama’s chances of making it to the College Football Playoff.

“If you were sitting at Alabama and said, ‘Let’s come up with the worst possible scenario for us,’ — it happened last night in Charlotte. Up until the fourth quarter, Alabama was in the playoff because SMU had not looked playoff worthy and then it all changed. And what you have to think is that committee sitting in that big room watching the game, they’re all connected to athletics. They respect competition,” Finebaum said.

“When SMU came back, I think everything changed in that room. I think they felt, as Rhett Lashlee said, it probably would be criminal. It wouldn’t be criminal in all reality, but that’s the perception. I think ultimately what got Alabama in last year is going to keep Alabama out.”

The final College Football Playoff rankings are scheduled to be revealed at 12:00 p.m. EST on Sunday, December 8th.