Bowl projections: Alabama exits College Football Playoff field, Indiana remains among at-large teams

Throughout the season, I have been saying that 9-3 would not be good enough to get into the College Football Playoff. However, after Week 13, we now have two SEC teams with three losses that we were not expecting to be there.

Alabama took another stunning road loss, this time a 24-3 beatdown at Oklahoma. As much as the CFP Selection Committee loves themselves some Alabama, this may be one ugly loss too many, even for them as the Crimson Tide now have losses to the Sooners and Vanderbilt.

Ole Miss also likely coughed up a CFP berth on Saturday with a 24-17 loss at Florida. The Rebels may tumble farther than Alabama in this week’s rankings because they were benefitting from a head-to-head win over Georgia, a result the committee honored. Now, that won’t be necessary.

Speaking of Georgia, the Bulldogs clinched a spot in the SEC Championship Game, but not because of anything it did on Saturday. The Bulldogs were busy drubbing UMass while the chaos was happening all around. Georgia will face the winner of next week’s Texas vs. Texas A&M game in Atlanta.

Now in regards to the Aggies, they also picked up their third loss of the season in an epic 43-41, four-overtime defeat at Auburn. Texas A&M is done as an at-large team, although its chances were not great to begin with. Still, he Aggies can win the SEC championship and earn the automatic berth that goes with it. They just have to beat Texas and Georgia along the way. Piece of cake, right?

I have Alabama as the first team out of the projected College Football Playoff bracket. SMU, the expected ACC runner-up, is projected as the last team in the field, while Clemson is another contender for that spot. I will be very interested to see what the committee does with Alabama in the rankings this…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/bowl-projections-alabama-exits-college-football-playoff-field-indiana-remains-among-at-large-teams/

Author : Jerry Palm

Publish date : 2024-11-24 15:34:00

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