Alabama's bowl loss to Michigan should silence College Football Playoff field critics

We heard it for more than twostraight weeks, from the day that the College Football Playoff field was set, through the first round of games, and all through this past week.

Alabama should have been in the playoff instead of SMU. The Crimson Tide should've been the 10 seed, not Indiana. Put South Carolina in over the Mustangs. Ole Miss played a tougher schedule than the Hoosiers.

It started as a discontented grumble that grew into a furious roar after a quartet of first-round blowouts, the pundits and SEC media hacks crowing about how these teams deserved a shot far more than the riff-raff who got into the field.

But after Tuesday, we can finally, truly, once and for all tell all of them to shut the hell up.

After multiple weeks of whining, posturing, complaining, and outright bitching and moaning, the Alabama Crimson Tide went out and reminded everyone that they are, in fact, trash, losing 19-13 to the Michigan Wolverines in the ReliaQuest Bowl.

You read that right: the mighty Crimson Tide, with their vaunted strength of schedule, who were so deserving of that playoff spot over SMU and Indiana, went out and laid an egg against a Michigan team who are utterly incapable of throwing the football. They lost to a team who threw for just 75 yards on the day, and who had neither of their top two running backs playing in this game.

They lost despite having their starting quarterback, Jalen Milroe, their star wide receiver, Ryan Williams, their leading rusher, Jam Miller, and the vast majority of their defense playing in the game. This was not a weakened Crimson Tide team; it was the same team they'd had all year long.

And what did they do? They went out and lost. To a Michigan team who lost to Indiana, who famously didn't deserve their spot in the field, remember?

Of course, those of us with functional logic sections of our brains knew that the Tide didn't deserve a spot in the field; they saw their unimpressive resume that featured losses to Vanderbilt and the worst Oklahoma team since the John Blake era.

But what about Ole Miss? What about South Carolina? The Gamecocks lost to this Alabama team, and Ole Miss lost to a four-win Kentucky side. Alabama was always the real case, the real team being pushed by Paul Finebaum and Kirk Herbstreit and all the other ESPN personalities. They were the specter looming behind the disproportionate shredding of Indiana football as they lost to Notre Dame, the shadow haunting the edges of every conversation about how SMU didn't deserve to be here.

If Alabama wasn't good enough, the other two certainly weren't. And after Tuesday, we know once and for all, the Crimson Tide weren't good enough. They weren't even particularly close. This was a mediocre team, playing mediocre football, who would have gotten their doors blown off by Notre Dame, or Penn State, and certainly by either Texas or Ohio State.

Just imagine how badly the Crimson Tide would have gotten vaporized by the Buckeyes in Columbus; we might have had a rolling clock for the first time in a playoff game in college football history.

The argument won't go away, of course. Bad faith whining like that seldom stays away for long. The next time an SEC team doesn't get more than their fair share of credit, or is treated like a team from any other league, you can expect it all to come flooding back, because that's how these things work.

But for now, for the next few months, we can finally tell all of them to shut up. Tell them they don't know ball, that they're just carrying water for a league that maybe wasn't as good as everyone seemed to think this season, while pointing to the scoreboard and having real, tangible proof. And that feels awfully good.

Alabama's bowl loss to Michigan should silence College Football Playoff field critics once and for all

By Sam Westmoreland | Dec 31, 2024