Alabama misses 2024 College Football Playoff
The College Football Playoff selection committee has left Alabama out of the first-ever 12-team field, opting to select ACC runner-up SMU as the final at-large team in the bracket.
SMU was ranked No. 8 entering last night’s ACC championship game where it lost to Clemson, but the committee felt its resume was strong enough to remain in over Alabama, which was the final team in the field during the penultimate rankings on Tuesday.
“We looked at the number of wins Alabama had against ranked opponents. We looked at SMU’s schedule, they were undefeated in conference,” CFP committee chair Warde Manuel told ESPN. “Their losses were to ranked teams. But we also looked at Alabama’s losses to unranked teams. It was quite a debate.
“We value strength of schedule, that’s why Alabama is a 3-loss team ranked ahead of teams with 2 losses. … In the way SMU played in that game, losing on the last-second field goal, great win by Clemson, great game, we just felt in this particular case SMU still had the nod at 10 above Alabama. But it’s no disrespect to Alabama’s strength of schedule, it’s just merely looking at the entire body of work for both teams.”
In its first year under Kalen DeBoer, Alabama finished the regular season 9-3, missing the SEC championship game with a 5-3 mark in league play. Alabama has wins over three ranked teams in SEC champion Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri. Of Alabama’s three losses, one came to a ranked Tennessee, while the others came at the hands of unranked Vanderbilt and Oklahoma.
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The Crimson Tide was in position to control its destiny to the playoff down the stretch of the season, but losing to the Sooners 24-3 on Nov. 23 derailed those hopes and left its fate in the hands of the committee.
The playoff field was filled out by the five highest-ranked conference champions receiving auto-bids: Big Ten champion Oregon, SEC champion Georgia, Big 12 champion Arizona State, ACC champion Clemson, and Mountain West champion Boise State. The remaining at-large teams were Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Tennessee, Indiana and SMU. The four highest-ranked conference champions received a first-round bye.
The first round of the playoff will be held on Dec. 20 and Dec. 21, with higher seeded teams hosting lower seeded teams on campus for their games.
Alabama’s bowl game destination will be announced later today.
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