CFP rankings analysis: Alabama football can't hide from Florida State loss

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The College Football Playoff selection committee made something clear with its unveiling of the new CFP rankings on Tuesday: the Alabama Crimson Tide can’t escape its Week 1 loss to Florida State.

Whether we like it or not, the committee’s decision to drop the Tide six spots in the CFP rankings after a narrow, two-point loss to the new No. 8 team in the nation, the Oklahoma Sooners (8-2), makes the Crimson Tide (8-2) one of the losers in Tuesday’s rankings.

The loss to Florida State, more so than Oklahoma, is a big reason why.

Not all losses are created equally, the committee says, even when one was over two months ago and the team in question — coach Kalen DeBoer’s Crimson Tide — has shown improvement in the nine games that have followed.

Again, that’s at least what the face of the selection committee is saying.

Enter new selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek. The Arkansas Razorbacks’ athletic director is less than a week into his role after previous chair Mack Rhoades stepped down from the post, as well as his job as athletic director at Baylor, following allegations reported by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports.

Yuracheck was discussing why two-loss Notre Dame was ranked one spot ahead of two-loss Alabama in Tuesday’s new CFP rankings. He told reporters through a partial transcript provided by USA TODAY Sports:

“Really where you break these teams down in the comparison, Notre Dame and Alabama, Notre Dame has losses to two teams that are within the top 13, a three-point loss against Miami to start the season and then a one-point loss versus Texas A&M.

“Alabama actually has a two-point loss at home last week against Oklahoma, but they had that loss at the beginning of the season, 31-17 at Florida State, a team that’s now 5-5. Florida State was up in that game 24-7. They held Alabama to less than 100 yards rushing in that game. That really was a sign of some of the struggles Alabama was going to have rushing the ball. You go back and look at Alabama’s game against South Carolina where they scored two touchdowns late to win that game, and then the next game against LSU where they won both of those but didn’t rush the ball for 100 yards. Then again against Oklahoma was not able to move the ball on the ground.

“So you look at the games that Alabama has struggled in, starting the season against Florida State, where they struggled with the ball. That’s two really good 8-2 teams, but I think you look at the losses of Notre Dame versus the losses of Alabama, and that was really one of the defining metrics that we used.”

Florida State loss still hard for Alabama to shake

The fact is that Alabama cannot simply hide its 31-17 loss to FSU at Doak Campbell Stadium in Week 1 — even if Week 1 losses in college football may end up feeling a bit like a Super Bowl champion losing to the doormat Dolphins, or some other sad-sack, in Week 1 in the NFL.

Alabama failed to earn a victory over a marquee opponent at home last Saturday, when a win over Oklahoma would have dramatically improved the Crimson Tide’s CFP hopes.

But it’s the loss to Florida State (currently 5-5) that still stings the Tide far worse than their down-to-the-wire loss to the Sooners, at least in the committee’s eyes.

But what about Alabama’s strength of schedule, quality wins?

In August, the College Football Playoff announced that it would use an “enhanced” tool to highlight teams’ strengths of schedules beginning in 2025. The tool is called “record strength.” The SEC led the push for it after a trio of 9-3 teams — namely, Alabama — were left out of the playoff a year ago.

As USA TODAY Sports described at the time:

Two more changes to the CFP include the enhancement of the CFP’s strength of schedule metric to “apply greater weight to games against strong opponents” and the introduction of a “record strength” metric, which assesses how a team performed against that schedule.

Using ESPN’s FPI rankings, for one, Alabama’s strength of record is No. 8 nationally; Notre Dame’s is four spots behind at No. 12. In the FPI’s strength of schedule, Alabama is No. 4; Notre Dame is outside the top 25 at No. 29.

Could CFP punish Alabama if it loses SEC title game?

Here’s what Yurachek told ESPN’s Rece Davis when asked about the prospect of teams reaching conference championship games and suffering a loss there, as Alabama could potentially do if it makes it to Atlanta.

“Well, the data point of a conference championship game will be just like it is in the past. It is another data point for most teams, a 13th datapoint that will be used to compare them to other teams in the rankings.”

That sound you just heard was SEC commissioner Greg Sankey losing his mind at the prospect of the SEC’s runner-up potentially being booted from the CFP with a third loss coming in Atlanta. I still have a hard time believing this scenario could really play out.

Why Alabama football CFP ranking may not matter

Forget for a moment whatever word salad Yuracheck said Tuesday night after the latest CFP rankings reveal.

Alabama needs to take care of business against Auburn (4-6) on Nov. 29 at Jordan-Hare Stadium. As crazy an environment as the 90th edition of the Iron Bowl will bring (6:30 p.m. CT, ABC), a Crimson Tide win over the Tigers would put Alabama back in the driver’s seat for a playoff berth.

If Alabama can’t beat an Auburn team that lost 10-3 to Kentucky, and is likely to be 5-6 heading into the final weekend of the regular season?

Just a personal opinion here, but a potential 9-3 team — even one with quality head-to-head wins over the Georgia Bulldogs, Tennessee Volunteers, Vanderbilt Commodores and Missouri Tigers — that couldn’t beat Auburn has no leg to stand on, anyway.

In other words, just win the damn Iron Bowl.

Alabama football schedule 2025

Alabama will take on Eastern Illinois at 1 p.m. CT Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The game will be available to stream via ESPN Unlimited (previously ESPN+) and SEC Network+.

  • Aug. 30: at Florida State (L, 31-17)
  • Sept. 6: vs. UL Monroe (W, 73-0)
  • Sept. 13: vs. Wisconsin (W, 38-14)
  • Sept. 27: at Georgia (W, 24-21)
  • Oct. 4: vs. Vanderbilt (W, 30-14)
  • Oct. 11: at Missouri (W, 27-24)
  • Oct. 18: vs. Tennessee (W, 37-20)
  • Oct. 25: at South Carolina (W, 29-22)
  • Nov. 8: vs. LSU (W, 20-9)
  • Nov. 15: vs. Oklahoma (L, 23-21)
  • Nov. 22 vs. Eastern Illinois, 1 p.m., ESPN+
  • Nov. 29: at Auburn, 6:30 p.m., ABC

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This article originally appeared on Roll Tide Wire: CFP rankings: Alabama football can’t hide from ugly Florida State loss

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