The College Football Playoff selection committee made a move that raised some eyebrows in its penultimate rankings by swapping Alabama and Notre Dame for the No. 9 and No. 10 spots, respectively. The Fighting Irish, despite walloping rival Stanford 49-20, slipped behind the Crimson Tide in a changing of places that left coach Marcus Freeman puzzled.
Alabama won a rivalry game of its own but was not nearly as dominant in a 27-20 Iron Bowl victory over Auburn. The Crimson Tide won by a smaller margin than the Fighting Irish, and its caliber of opponent only marginally better than Auburn, which finished the regular season with just one more win than Stanford. How was that enough for the committee to be convinced that Alabama deserved a higher ranking than Notre Dame? That is the question Freeman is left pondering.
“Obviously you’re disappointed, but more so because of a little bit of confusion,” Freeman said Wednesday. “You’re confused in terms of what we could have done differently and why we fell when we won 49-20. I think we were up 42-6 going into the fourth quarter. I don’t spend time talking about other teams, but it’s just like, OK, what could we have done differently? I don’t know.”
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At surface level, a one-spot difference in the top 25 is hardly sizable. But given where Notre Dame and Alabama stand in the race for inclusion in the 12-team playoff bracket, one spot could be the margin between competing for a national championship and watching the CFP from home.
“You always look for cause and effect,” Freeman said. “You look for a reasoning why you go up or you fall. For me, you didn’t see a great explanation for why we fell when we had the performance we did last Saturday.”
If the favorites in this weekend’s conference championship games win, Notre Dame will be in position to hold the final at-large spot in the bracket. But if No. 11 BYU defeats No. 4 Texas Tech in the Big 12 Championship Game and becomes a “bid stealer” of sorts, the Fighting Irish would likely be the team bounced from the projected bracket.
CFP committee chair explains controversial rankings
Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, who stepped into the CFP selection committee chair position last month, offered an explanation for the swap at the No. 9 and No. 10 spots. Now in his second year on the committee, Yurachek said the debate in the room between Notre Dame and Alabama over the last three weeks has been among the strongest he has witnessed during his CFP service.
“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 and had a strong win at Stanford, but Alabama went on the road in a rivalry game, looked really good,” Yurachek said on Tuesday’s rankings show. “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.”
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One possible explanation for Alabama’s climb to No. 9 is that the committee may have sought to protect the Crimson Tide from falling out of the bracket in the event it loses to No. 3 Georgia the SEC Championship Game. The committee set a precedent in previous years that it wishes not to punish title game losers for falling short in a 13th data point.
Yurachek, however, said that was not a consideration for this week’s rankings and instead would be discussed after the championship games are complete.
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