But something that heretofore had not really reared its ugly head manifested Tuesday night: SEC bias.
Let’s start at the top. Here are the committee’s rankings for Week 5.
Miami stayed unmoved, coming in at #12 for another week.
But let’s focus on the most noteworthy development in the current playoff picture: Alabama and Notre Dame getting flipped.
The Irish had been ranked 9th for three weeks in a row, and now, suddenly, Alabama moves to 9 and the Irish fall to 10. For the record, I believe Alabama should be ahead of Notre Dame. But I thought that for the last few weeks. What happened this weekend that would suddenly cause the committee to move Alabama ahead of Notre Dame?
Let’s ask CFP Chairman Hunter Yurachek.
“The debate between Alabama and Notre Dame over the past three weeks has been one of the strongest debates we’ve had in the room for the past two years that I’ve been a member of the committee,” Yurachek told ESPN. “I think this week, as we looked at those two teams and how closely they have been over the past three weeks, Notre Dame went on the road, had a strong win at Stanford, but Alabama went on the road and a rivalry game looked really good, especially in the first half, getting up 17 to nothing, ran the ball well. Auburn came back at them. They had a great gutsy call on fourth-and-2, late in the third quarter, to get a touchdown, and then got the turnover late in that game. And I think that was enough to change the minds of a couple of committee members to push Alabama up ahead of Notre Dame in this week’s rankings.”
What? It’s unclear what Hunter Yurachek was watching, but Alabama certainly didn’t look good against Auburn. Yes, they built up a 17-0 lead. Then they promptly watched that lead get eaten up by a 5-win team with an interim coach and likely would have been forced to overtime had Cam Coleman not fumbled the ball.
Yurachek says Alabama had a great first half in a rivalry game on the road. Alabama led Auburn 17-6 at halftime. Notre Dame was also in a rivalry game on the road and had an infinitely better first half, whalloping the Cardinal 35-3.
So, again, Alabama deserves to be ahead of Notre Dame, but they’ve deserved it for about a month. Absolutely nothing happened this weekend that justified moving Bama ahead of the Irish.
The only thing that could explain it is that the committee wants to shield the loser of the SEC championship game from falling out of the playoffs. Yurachek flatly denied that when explicitly asked by ESPN’s Chris Fowler about whether the SECCG outcome factored into their decision. However, there’s simply no other way to justify it.
The rambling incoherence of praising Alabama’s lackluster Iron Bowl performance and their “gutsy” 4th & 2 call is complete garbage. Again, here is another direct comparison to the Notre Dame game. The Irish ran a fake punt from their own 15-yard line against Stanford. Does that not qualify as sufficiently “gutsy” in Yurachek’s eyes?
Ridiculous.
Alabama has wins against Georgia (3), Vanderbilt (14), Missouri (25th in the AP, 14th when Alabama played them), and Tennessee (11th when Alabama played them). It’s evident to all with eyeballs that Alabama should have been ahead of Notre Dame. But letting that slide for over a month only to use the final regular season rankings as a way to shield a member of the Good Ole Boys club from postseason exclusion is just lame.
For the first time in these CFP rankings, Notre Dame fans have a genuine cause for outrage.
The players deserve better than what this committee has done.
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