Sports
Alabama football is a contender for the CFP bracket even with three losses
- If the College Football Playoff committee needs a three-loss team for the bracket, lighten up Alabama. Looking at you.
- Ole Miss failed because Lane Kiffin's Rebels, for all their talent, lacked a killer instinct.
- Looking for a national championship candidate? Start with the state of Ohio, Georgia, Oregon or Texas.
Alabama and Mississippi refused to let Indiana claim the gold medal for Saturday's biggest failure.
Lose by 23 points at Ohio State? Yeah, that's bad, Hoosiers.
Lost by 21 points at Oklahoma, which hadn't beaten a Bowl Subdivision opponent in almost two months? Yeah, that's even worse, Crimson Tide.
Losing to the opponent who once saw you as his savior? Yes, that's horrible, Lane Kiffin, but it's fitting for a season of equality between 'above' and 'below'.
As the College Football Playoff race enters its final inning and the SEC considers how to put lipstick on a pig, here's what's still on my mind after Week 13:
Will Alabama remain in the hunt for the College Football Playoffs?
I can't believe I'm writing this because the Crimson flood just got blown away by a bad opponent, but hey, Alabama retains a hint of a playoff pulse.
That's not evidence of Alabama, by the way.
Alabama's inconsistent performance left no room to grumble if it was left off the field, but the playoff contains twelve spots, and the bracket isn't shrinking just because this season has brought a plethora of upsets and fewer superpowers.
Alabama (8-3) faced one of the toughest schedules in the country. Wins against Georgia, South Carolina and LSU bolster the resume, even as losses to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma drag it down.
The Tide currently sits at number 13 Poll of American LBM coaches. The College Football Playoffs rankings will be updated Tuesday night.
If the committee needs a three-loss team to complete the field, Alabama will be at the top of the list.
Alabama needs to win the Iron Bowl and will likely need some help to make it to the CFP. The best path? South Carolina beats Clemson, Syracuse beats Miami and SMU wins the ACC Championship.
That would leave the ACC with just one team, SMU, with fewer than three losses, threatening to turn the conference back into a one-bid league.
There are also other options to save Alabama.
What about if Georgia loses to Georgia Tech and then loses again in the SEC championship game? Georgia out, Alabama in?
Either way, Alabama fans won't remember this season as a successful debut for Kalen DeBoer. Needing help from Georgia Tech or Syracuse to make the playoffs doesn't meet Alabama's standard. That doesn't mean DeBoer's tenure is doomed, but his debut was bankrupt.
BOWL PROJECTION: Tennessee and ACC get a big playoff boost
CALM DOWN: The five biggest overreactions of week 13
What happened to Ole ma'am?
Good teams find ways to win their clunkers.
Talented teams that lack mental strength keep saying 'must, want, can'.
Ole Miss will go down as a talented team that flopped because the Rebels couldn't handle pressure situations.
The Rebels continually tightened up in the crucial time and failed to make enough big plays with games on the line. Ole Miss gave up a miracle on fourth down in an inexplicable loss to Kentucky and then missed a field goal that would have forced overtime.
The Rebels failed to protect a second-half lead against LSU, were unable to provide a crucial stop in the fourth quarter and gave away a game. Ole Miss had nothing to lose.
Against Florida, the Rebels scored zero points on three red zone trips.
The lasting image of this Ole Miss season will be Lane Kiffin's look of bewilderment in the final seconds of the Florida loss, as the realization dawned that he had been outmatched by Billy Napier, the coach many Florida fans were led to believe by Kiffin last month. wanted to have it replaced..
Kiffin managed to do more with less early in his term. He usually beat the teams he was supposed to beat. The script has been flipped this year. With his best-ever Ole Miss roster, Kiffin did less with more. With a schedule tailor-made for playoff qualifying, he lost to one mediocre opponent after another, Kentucky, then LSU, then Florida.
After Ole Miss crushed Georgia, we stumbled over giving Kiffin credit for correcting the program's weaknesses in the scrimmage through transfers.
But even a robust NIL collective cannot acquire a killing instinct.
Ole Miss had a complete lack of calm, cool and collected killer instinct, from the sideline to the quarterback, and overtook the Rebels in what would go down as one of the most disappointing seasons of Kiffin's career.
Is the 12-team CFP bracket here to stay?
I suspect more changes are coming. Fan response seems overwhelmingly positive to this format, and the system works exactly as designed. This big, beautiful mess gave us one of the most dramatic seasons I can remember.
The structure of the playoff meant that Indiana-Ohio State, Ole Miss-Florida and Alabama-Oklahoma were crucial games. Expand the play-off to 16 or even 14, and those results become less consistent.
So should the play-off change? No.
But SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is waving a big stick. How do you think Sankey feels about his conference now being positioned to qualify fewer teams than the Big Ten, while the ACC gets two and maybe even three spots?
I don't expect this to be a good fit for the SEC. Enjoy this playoff format this year and next, as I suspect changes will come in 2026 that will further stack the deck towards the so-called “Super Two” conferences.
Who will win the national championship?
Good question. This is not one of those years where one or two superpowers withdraw from the pack. Even undefeated Oregon shows some vulnerability.
If you allow me to list four teams that I think could win the national championship, and you get all the others, I would take, in order:
1. Ohio State, 2. Georgia, 3. Oregon, 4. Texas.
And I'd feel good about my chances, although not nearly as good as if I could have 2019 LSU or 2020 Alabama.
Goodbye, superpowers. You had a nice walk.
Blake Toppmeyeris the national college football columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him[email protected]and follow him on Twitter@btoppmeyer.Subscribeto read all his columns.
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