Alabama gets bad news in College Football Playoff rankings

The penultimate College Football Playoff rankings were revealed on Tuesday night and Alabama’s spot in the Top 25 is bad news for the Crimson Tide.

Just a week ago, it felt like the chances for the Alabama Crimson Tide to make the College Football Playoff seemed next to impossible. At the time, there were seven teams that were set to play in conference championship games that all had a better chance of making it in than Nick Saban’s team.

What a difference a Saturday can make.

Clemson, LSU and Ohio State all went down in the regular season finale and, thus, seemingly opened the door for the Crimson Tide to somehow sneak into the Top 4 if chaos continued to break. But one thing that would really have worked in Alabama’s favor would have been the fact that the Buckeyes lost to Michigan by 20+ points would put Bama at No. 5 in the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings.

That was not the case.

Alabama has virtually no shot to make the College Football Playoff

When the College Football Playoff rankings were revealed on Tuesday night, Alabama came in at No. 6 behind Ohio State at No. 5. That means that, if USC or TCU were to lose in the Pac-12 or Big 12 Championship Games, respectively, Bama would not be the first team to get into the field of four.

Having said that, CFP selection committee chairman Boo Corrigan did offer a confusing note speaking with the media after the rankings reveal, saying that the Crimson Tide and Buckeyes weren’t locked into their position with OSU in front, despite the fact that neither team plays this week.

Who knows how much stock to put into that comment? The more pressing issue for Alabama, though, is that it appears that both Georgia and Michigan are virtual locks to make the Playoff, no matter what happens against LSU and Purdue, respectively. And you could make the case that the same is true for TCU as, even if they lost to Kansas State, that would be one loss and it would be to a Top 10 team that they’ve already beaten once this season.

That would theoretically only leave one potential outcome for either OSU or Bama to get into the field, which would be USC losing to Utah for the second time this season. And while Corrigan might say that the teams aren’t locked in order, the truth of the matter is it would be hard to justify putting a two-loss Alabama in over one-loss Ohio State if USC were to lose.

So if we’re reading between the multitude of lines, Alabama’s slim hopes of making the College Football Playoff appear to be dead. Crazier things have happened, to be sure. But it would definitely cause an outcry at this point if the Crimson Tide ended up in the field competing for a national championship.

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