Breaking: College Football Playoff Committee does not watch football, ranks Alabama #12

In case you missed it, the clearly unqualified College Football Playoff Committee is the only group of people on the planet who don’t think Alabama is one of the ten best teams.

I have defended the committee for doing their primary jobs well in the past, and I will continue to do so. The top four are unchanged and they got that part right. Beyond that, however, it gets hairy. It appears that they have taken the simple route and gone strictly by record. No two loss team ranks ahead of any one loss team, and no three loss team ranks ahead of any two...

Wait.

Auburn, a three loss team that has performed significantly worse than Alabama against common opponents all season, and needed all the luck plus help from the officials to beat the Tide at home by a skinny field goal is ranked ahead of Alabama at #11 while the Tide check in at #12.

For comparison, Alabama ranks #9 in both the AP and coaches’ polls, #2 in SP+ and #3 in FPI, and #3 in FEI. They are the best team in the SEC by every advanced, opponent adjusted metric out there, yet this committee has them fifth in the league. No one is suggesting that the Tide should be in the playoff, but that’s ridiculous.

Alabama has two losses because they played a roughly equal team in LSU and came up just short, and ran into a confluence of events in Auburn that was too much to overcome. People talk about Alabama’s defensive shortcomings, and to be sure the Tide has issues on that side of the ball, but they also went on the road and put up 45 points on over 500 yards of offense, against a consensus top 5 defense, with a backup QB. No one had scored more than 24 against Auburn all season.

It really doesn’t matter to Alabama. The committee seems intent on sending them to the Citrus Bowl or something. Maybe they are going against what Mullens has said in the past and looking ahead to a whole bunch of Alabama upperclassmen skipping the bowl game.

Failing that, these folks clearly either aren’t watching the games as they claim or they don’t know what they are looking at. Since they have been charged with choosing playoff participants, let’s hope it’s an issue of agenda and not incompetence. At least agendas can be adjusted.

Roll Tide.