Let’s start with BYU. The Cougars were blown out by Texas Tech 34-7, a margin of defeat even larger than when they faced the Raiders in Lubbock earlier this season (29-7).
For all intents and purposes, BYU’s College Football Playoff (CFP) bid is over. I know they’re only a two-loss team, and those losses are fantastic. Both of them to an incredible Texas Tech team that could well be the best team in the country.
But the committee knew what they were doing when they ranked the Cougars 11th. It put them in a position to control their own destiny, where they could knock off the No. 4 team in the country and vault Notre Dame into the playoffs. Or they could lose and get bounced.
As it turns out, not only did they lose, but they also lost badly.
BYU is out.
Now for Alabama.
The Tide received a completely unearned elevation in the rankings from 10 to 9 this week, leapfrogging Notre Dame, because the committee suspected Alabama might lose the SEC Championship Game and wanted to ensure the Tide still had a seat when the playoff music stopped.
That “favor” from the committee turned out to be much needed, as the Crimson Tide got shellacked by Georgia 28-7.
But that score doesn’t tell the whole story. No, to get into the true, gory details of Bama’s dismantlement at the hands of the Bulldogs, you need to go into the numbers themselves.
Georgia held Alabama to -3 rushing yards in the game. A stat that will no doubt fill the phone lines on The Paul Finebaum Show next week with apoplectic Alabamians calling for head coach Kalen DeBoer’s head.
Ty Simpson #15 of the Alabama Crimson Tide throws the ball from the end zone under pressure by the Georgia Bulldogs defense in the 2025 SEC Championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on December 0,6, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
But that’s not all.
As a team, Bama was held to 209 net yards of offense. Alabama converted only 3-of-14 3rd down attempts. 3-of-14!
Alabama was dominated in every way a football team can be dominated. Couple this with their near loss against 5-7 Auburn last week, and Alabama looked like a team that should not be in the playoff.
In fact, given how they played, they shouldn’t be in the playoffs. After all, if BYU gets blown out and drops out of the playoff, then Alabama should, too, right?
Well, not so fast.
Alabama still has the best win in the country (though, as I write this, Indiana has the top-ranked Buckeyes very much on the ropes) with their defeat of third-ranked Georgia in Athens over a month ago.
Bama’s Strength of Schedule & Strength of Record is better than ND & Miami’s. Alabama has seven wins against FPI Top 35 teams. ND had one. Miami had two.
Yes, the Tide has three losses, which is why the committee will likely flip them with Notre Dame for the second week in a row, and make them tenth, as the new buffer between the Irish and the Hurricanes.
Does the committee have an SEC bias? Of course, they do. That’s why they moved Alabama to 9 and gave them the buffer of the ten spot in case things went sideways in Atlanta. However, the committee’s bias is not just an SEC bias; it also reflects an institutional bias.
Suppose the CFP elects to bounce Alabama out of the playoffs for its loss in the SEC Conference Championship. In that case, Game, they will essentially be ordering the Code Red on conference championship games. If Alabama misses out on a chance to go to the playoffs because of an extra game that neither Miami nor Notre Dame had to play, every team will forfeit its conference championship games next year.
The committee, made up of college football executives who know all too well how huge those conference championship games are in terms of sponsorships and money for the schools and the conferences.
There may well come a time when conferences and conference championship games are done away with. But that moment has not yet arrived.
Alabama may deserve to be out. But this decision is about a lot more than Alabama. Anything can happen, but don’t expect the committee to wake up and choose that kind of violence tomorrow.
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