Alabama was the first team left out of the College Football Playoff field, ranking one spot behind the final at-large bid, SMU. The Crimson Tide's worst-case scenario happened after Clemson upset the Mustangs in the ACC Championship Game.
It was always going to be tough for Alabama to recover from their third loss of the season against Oklahoma in Week 13. Winning the 2024 Iron Bowl against Auburn didn't move the needle enough to get past a two-loss Power 4 team (SMU) that lost in its conference championship.
CBS Sports' Shehan Jeyarajah believes that the Crimson Tide could've avoided this snub scenario had they scheduled and won a tough nonconference game.
"I can't repeat enough, Alabama did not lose a nonconference game or schedule anyone hard in nonconference this year. In fact, if they *did* schedule someone hard and won, they might have gotten in," Jeyarajah wrote.
To be fair, Wisconsin was put on the schedule with expectations Luke Fickell would have the Badgers further along than they ended up (5-7) in his second season.
Jeyarajah was responding to Nick Saban's attempt to undermine SMU using Strength of Schedule as his point of attack.
"If we don't take strength of schedule into consideration, is there any benefit to scheduling really good teams in the future. Here at Alabama, we're supposed to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Florida State in the future outside the league," Saban said on ESPN after the CFP field was announced.
"Those are great games for fans to see, and that's what I think we should be doing in college football is creating more good inventory for great games that people are interested in, but do you enhance people wanting to do that -- what's the athletic director going to do? He may go cancel all those games now, knowing the SEC is tough enough."
Ultimately, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee decided to not penalize SMU for playing in its conference championship game. The message to the SEC and Alabama was that the brand name could not carry an undeserving team over one that didn't have nearly as bad of losses as Oklahoma and Vanderbilt.