How the CFP selection committee views Alabama ahead of SEC title game

Alabama stayed at No. 8 in the penultimate College Football Playoff Top 25, which means even if it beats top-ranked Georgia in the SEC Championship Game, it could need help.

Behind the Bulldogs in Tuesday night’s rankings was No. 2 Michigan, No. 3 Washington and No. 4 Florida State, the only remaining undefeated FBS teams. Ahead of the Crimson Tide were three other one-loss teams in No. 5 Oregon, No. 6 Ohio State and No. 7 Texas. 

Entering conference championship week, Alabama holds wins over three teams currently in the top 25 (No. 11 Ole Miss, No. 13 LSU and No. 21 Tennessee), while its lone loss is to the No. 7 Longhorns. The Tide can add a win over the No. 1 team on Saturday in its conference title game and currently has the seventh-best strength of record and 31st strength of schedule.

Alabama (11-1, 8-0 SEC) must handle business in Atlanta in order to be in the mix when the College Football Playoff selection committee meets for the final time this weekend. Shortly after the rankings were unveiled on ESPN, committee chair Boo Corrigan spoke to the media on a conference call. Below is everything Corrigan – and Bill Hancock – said about UA.

Q. Could either one of you give me a sense of the pecking order of criteria that the committee will use next week when determining the top 4? I know this is a hypothetical, but should Alabama and Texas both finish 12-1 with one spot available, how do you determine which one gets in? 

BILL HANCOCK: Thank you for asking. Those tiebreaker criteria are not prioritized, so it’ll be up to the judgment of each committee member which of the tiebreakers are more important to him or her. There’s just no established priority for the tiebreakers. 

BOO CORRIGAN: Just to add on to that, there’s so many great games coming up this weekend. Seven of the eight teams are playing in conference championship games, and quite frankly, we’re all looking forward to watching them. It’s been a great year this season, and we’re looking forward to seeing how it all ends up.

Q. Can you take us through the discussion between Oregon, Ohio State, Texas and Alabama and how you guys kind of figured out that order? 

BOO CORRIGAN: Well, what I’d share with you, a lot of conversation early when we went into the room, at the end of the day, and then coming back again this morning to make sure that we were hearing every opinion. The good news is everyone is weighing in to everything, where they’re opinions are, what their point is on each one of those teams. All 11-1, all with good wins, all obviously have lost a game, and looking at it and as we came through the evaluation of that, after weighing many points and making sure that we took our time going through it, we ended up where we did at 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Q. At this point in the season a team ranked eighth has never gotten to the College Football Playoff. Is there a road for Alabama to get into the top 4, whether that be just be Georgia or beat Georgia and get some help? Is there a road for Alabama at this point? 

BOO CORRIGAN: Good question, fair question, but it’s kind of asking us to project on where we are. Our goal is to watch games this weekend, and it’ll be great to be able to watch them as a group as we go through it and as we’ve talked about before. Conference championships and head-to-heads and everything that we look at per the protocol will be in full effect of what we’re doing and making sure that we make the right decisions. 

Q. How much separation does the committee see between Texas and Alabama there at 7 and 8? 

BOO CORRIGAN: Yeah, same thing. Again, it is close. As we look at it, you can look at any part of what we’re doing when you get here in the different groupings and everything that we do, but two really good teams that have had really good years, done a great job by Sark and by Coach Saban, and we’ll just continue to evaluate. 

Q. To follow up, I guess I’m trying to clarify the whole recency thing. Does Texas’s head-to-head win against Alabama carry as much weight as it would if it would have happened later in the season? Does it still carry that same amount of weight even though it happened in week two, or does it carry less week because it happened earlier in the season? 

BOO CORRIGAN: Head-to-head is head-to-head, no matter when the game is played, and that’s how we look at it.

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