In the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff, the selection committee left out Alabama and instead chose SMU as the final at-large team in the playoffs.
Despite finishing No. 11 in the final rankings, the Crimson Tide were leapfrogged by the Big 12 champion No. 12 Arizona State and ACC champion No. 16 Clemson, who both received automatic bids. This marks just the third time that Alabama has missed the College Football Playoff since it was introduced in 2014.
The Crimson Tide were idle on Saturday after failing to make the SEC Championship Game, while the Mustangs fell victim to a 34-31 loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game on a last-second 56-yard field goal.
Last week after the CFP committee put in a 9-3 Alabama team over 10-2 Miami, committee chair Warde Manuel basically said that strength of schedule carried a ton of weight.
"What it really came down to is Alabama is 3-1 against current top 25 teams and Miami is 0-1,” Manuel said. “Alabama is 6-1 against teams above .500 and Miami's 4-2. In the last three games, Miami has lost twice."
Fast-forward to Sunday, and those words were seemingly thrown out of the window. When comparing the strength of schedule, Alabama holds the No. 16 strength of schedule, while SMU's schedule ranks at No. 60, which is actually five spots lower than Miami's.
Alabama boasts three victories over ranked opponents, including SEC champion No. 2 Georgia, No. 15 South Carolina and No. 19 Missouri. In contrast, SMU lacks a win against ranked teams and has lost to the only two ranked opponents it faced, No. 16 Clemson and No. 17 BYU.
Manuel on Sunday explained why SMU was selected over Alabama.
“We looked at the number of wins that Alabama had against ranked opponents,” Manuel said on ESPN. “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 loss to unranked teams, and it was quite a debate.I mean, 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 is something that we talk about quite a bit. But in the balance of it, in the way SMU played in that game, losing on the 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 Alabama.”
The committee was put in a tough spot of trying not to punish a team for losing in their conference championship while others sat home and watched, but instead, the committee may have created another controversy.
Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban raised a question that many fans were thinking during ESPN’s selection show. No team was rewarded for a tough schedule, and no team was punished for having a weak schedule, so why schedule tough games if it’s not going to be taken into serious consideration?
"If we don't take strength of schedule into consideration, is there any benefit to scheduling really good teams in the future?" Saban asked. "Here at Alabama, we are supposed to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Florida State in the future outside of the league. Those are great games for fans to see. That's what we should be doing. We need to create a better inventory and great games for people to be interested in. The athletic director may cancel all those games now."
All things considered, Alabama shouldn’t have left it in the hands of the committee. If they would have handled business against Oklahoma in Week 13, they would have been in without a doubt. In the end, Saban said it best that nobody should be complaining about being left out because they controlled their own destiny.
"I do think the best teams are in the playoffs, which is most important," Saban said. "No coach should have any complaint about his circumstances relative to getting into the playoffs because they all control their own destiny, and they all had opportunities and bad losses that contributed to their circumstances. This should be a learning lesson for each team and every individual on those teams."
Alabama will learn later on Sunday which bowl it will be attending. Most projections have the Tide playing in the Citrus Bowl on December 31 in Orlando, Fla.
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