SMU gives Alabama, Ole Miss fans even more ammo to cry foul over CFP snub

When the final College Football Playoff bracket was set to be revealed, fans were going to be upset regardless of what the committee decided to do. Either, the committee was going to reward the best 12 teams on paper regardless of what their regular season record was, or, regular season was going to matter, and punish teams who might be among the 12 best in the country but took horrific losses during the year.

The Alabama Crimson Tide and Ole Miss Rebels are two examples of teams who had arguments for being among the 12 best in the country yet missed out on the CFP. The reason that they missed out was because they each took three losses during the regular season. Even with those losses, fans of the Crimson Tide and of the Rebels felt as if their team should've been in for the sole fact that the SEC is a different beast.

SMU's performance in their CFP debut certainly backs up those fans frustrated by the omissions of Alabama and Ole Miss.

SMU gives validation to frustrated Alabama and Ole Miss fans with horrific CFP performance

Matched up against an 11-2 Penn State team, the Mustangs were completely overmatched from the start on Saturday. Kevin Jennings allowed the Nittany Lions to take complete control early by throwing a pair of pick-sixes in the first half. Penn State would tack on two more touchdowns to end the first half with a 28-0 lead. The game felt over once Jennings threw the pick-sixes, and was surely over by the time halftime arrived.

SMU was able to put points on the board with a field goal in the third quarter, but that's all they've done as of this writing. Again, this game has proven to be a mismatch from the start, as many predicted.

Chances are, a team like Alabama would've made this game a lot more interesting if they didn't beat Penn State altogether. After all, they had signature wins against teams like Georgia, South Carolina, and Missouri during the regular season. Ole Miss had a similar resume, and managed to beat Georgia by three scores. They both managed to go 9-3 despite one of the toughest strengths of schedule in the country.

What the committee did made sense. Omitting SMU from the CFP would've invalidated regular season results. The Mustangs lost just one regular season game and nearly won its conference championship. Alabama and Ole Miss each lost three regular season games.

At the end of the day, people would've been upset regardless of what the committee decided to do. What we do know, though, is that this game would've been a whole lot more interesting if Alabama made the cut instead of SMU based on sheer talent alone. Fans who are upset, though, should be pointing their frustration at their teams for losing easy regular season games.