Warde Manuel admits he doesn't know how close vote was between Alabama, SMU for final CFP spot

Rece Davis couldn’t let Warde Manuel go without one final question Sunday afternoon: “How close was the final vote” between Alabama and SMU for the College Football Playoff‘s final at-large bid?

In what will be his final season apart of the College Football Playoff selection committee, the unusually transparent committee chairman couldn’t answer the question due in part due to how secretive the CFP voting tally is, even to the man at the head of the table.

“Here’s the beauty of the process: I don’t know. I don’t know how many people had to change their mind,” Manuel told Davis on Sunday afternoon’s ESPN College Football Playoff Selection Show. “(While) I’m a member of the committee and I have a vote, I’m (also) leading the committee and talking about the process of what we need to go through and making sure people are committed to opening the conversation and talking about how they see things.

“But what I don’t see is the actual vote, and I don’t always have this sense of how people voted or who voted for what unless somebody, during the conversation, says ‘this is how I see it.’ So, I don’t know how close (the final vote was). My assumption is that it would be really close,” Manuel continued. “This is not something we took lightly. Like I said, the arguments in the room, the discussion, back-and-forth, were passionate, where people really thought through what they needed to do and wanted to put forth in terms of the ranking. So I think, without knowing, I’d say it was very, very close.”

No matter how close the final vote was, the result was the same. No. 10 SMU (11-2) bumped out 11th-ranked Alabama (9-3) for the CFP’s final at-large bid in the first-ever 12-team Playoff field after falling just two spots following the Mustangs’ 34-31 loss to No. 16 Clemson (10-3) in Saturday night’s ACC Championship Game from Charlotte.

Given some of the reasoning Manuel himself gave for the No. 11 Crimson Tide representing the final at-large bid in last Tuesday night’s penultimate rankings, including having more Top 25 wins over then-No. 12 Miami (10-2), the decision surprised many across college football, especially in the SEC. Much like the Hurricanes, which dropped six spots in the penultimate rankings after a 42-38 Week 14 loss at Syracuse, SMU doesn’t have a single Top 25 win on its resume.

But ultimately, Top 25 wins didn’t matter as much as overall “body of work” in the committee’s eyes.

Warde Manuel defends SMU as final seed over Alabama

During a Sunday afternoon appearance on ESPN’s College Football Playoff Selection Show, Manuel explained the controversial decision.

“Your debate on television really summed up the debate had in the room,” Manuel told Davis. “We looked at the number of wins Alabama had against ranked opponents. We looked at SMU’s schedule and they were undefeated in-conference. Their losses were to ranked teams. But we also looked at Alabama’s losses to unranked teams. And it was quite a debate.

“We value strength of schedule. That’s why Alabama as a three-loss team is ranked ahead of other teams that have two losses. It’s something that we talked about quite a bit. But in the balance of it, the way SMU played in that game, losing on a last-second field goal, great win by Clemson, great game. We just felt that in this particular case, SMU still had the nod at 10 above of Alabama. And that’s no disrespect to Alabama’s strength of schedule. It’s merely looking at the entire body of work for both teams.”