Alabama bowl projections: Where will Tide land if they miss College Football Playoff?

Just when it looked like we could finally start to trust Alabama, Kalen DeBoer's team slipped on yet another banana peel. Dominant wins over ranked LSU and Missouri teams had put the Tide squarely back into the SEC and College Football Playoff pictures despite a rocky start. And some early chaos broke their way in Week 13, with Indiana and Ole Miss both going down. Handle its business over the final two weeks, and Bama's destiny was still very much in its hands.

But the Tide didn't just trip over their final hurdle; they ran square into it, scoring just three points in an ugly loss to a 5-5 Oklahoma team in Norman on Saturday night. Jalen Milroe threw three awful interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown, and the Alabama defense struggled to get off the field at times against a Sooners offense that didn't even bother trying to throw the ball. All the progress DeBoer and Co. seemed to have made in recent weeks was wiped out in an instant, and suddenly, a team with legitimate conference and national title hopes found itself on the outside looking in.

While there is technically still a path for the Tide to sneak into the CFP, it would take a whole lot of help over the season's final week — almost certainly more help than Alabama will be able to count on. As things stand, just about every bowl projection is skeptical of the team's chances of getting into the field, raising questions about just where the Tide will wind up playing this postseason.

2024 Alabama bowl projections: Tide on the outside of playoff picture

In a survey of five major bowl projections, none had Alabama as a playoff team in the wake of its third loss. What does that mean for the team's postseason destination? Should the Tide indeed fall on the wrong side of the bubble, the most likely option would be the Citrus Bowl: That game gets first pick of the SEC teams that don't qualify for the playoff, and it would almost certainly choose Alabama and its massive fan base over the other available options. Four of the five projections have the Tide headed to Orlando; just one, Mark Schlabach at ESPN, has the Citrus opting for South Carolina instead, with Alabama falling to the ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa.

If Alabama does wind up in the Citrus Bowl, its opponent will likely be Illinois. The Illini currently project as the highest-ranked Big Ten team to miss out on the playoff, and can clinch a 9-3 finish with a win over 4-7 Northwestern during Rivalry Week. Should Illinois lose that game, Iowa could leapfrog them in the standings with a win on Black Friday against Nebraska, in which case the Hawkeyes would be ticketed for the Citrus instead.

Either way, it's far from the end of the season that Bama fans envisioned just a few days ago. Again, all is not lost: ESPN's FPI gives the Crimson Tide a 37.7 percent chance to make the playoff, and teams like Georgia, Miami, Notre Dame, Indiana and Clemson could still leave the door open with an unexpected loss. Right now, though, all signs point to just the program's third non-playoff bowl appearance in the last decade.