For once, the Alabama Crimson Tide didn’t get the benefit of the doubt. Many college football fans in the other 49 states—and in Lee County, Alabama (home of Auburn)—are delighted that the final at-large bid to the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff (CFP) was awarded to SMU, not Alabama. ESPN and the New York Times, however, would have you believe that the Crimson Tide were the victims of injustice and that the Mustangs were the recipients of charity. In truth, the CFP Selection Committee got it right, to the benefit of the Mustangs, the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the sport—and to the satisfaction of millions of fans who don’t buy Nick Saban’s argument that Alabama, along with its conference, is an overlooked victim.
For those who don’t follow college football closely, the sport didn’t have a playoff system throughout most of its storied history, with nonplayoff bowl games—such as the spectacular Rose Bowl—taking center stage. From 1998 through January 2014, the Bowl Championship Series allowed the two top-ranked teams to play one another in an official national championship game, while preserving the rest of the traditional bowl structure. My rankings, the Anderson & Hester College Football Computer Rankings, were one of the components that the BCS used to determine who those two teams would be.
If the BCS system were still in effect this year, #1 Oregon and #2 Georgia would be playing in an essentially controversy-free national championship game. But starting with the 2014 season, college football replaced the BCS with a four-team playoff. This season, the playoff field has expanded to 12 teams. It shouldn’t expand any further; the 12-team field is just exclusive enough that talent-stocked teams can’t simply coast through the regular season and get away with it. Further expansion would render the regular season what it has become in most other American sports: a quasi-exhibition season that’s somewhat interesting but lacks the competitive intensity of yesteryear’s pennant races.
College football’s 12 playoff teams are selected by the CFP Selection Committee, with five spots reserved for the highest-ranked conference champions. Of the seven at-large entries, this year’s final berth, in the committee’s estimation, came down to SMU (11 wins, 2 losses) or Alabama (9-3). ESPN’s selection show, which unveiled the playoff field, featured a “balanced” mix of commentators: three from Alabama, three from elsewhere. These pundits scrupulously avoided much mention of the Crimson Tide’s having three losses (to SMU’s two), with Saban—the former Alabama coach—hogging much of the airtime and claiming that the Southeastern Conference (SEC) just can’t get a fair shake against teams with weaker schedules, like SMU. Saban didn’t seem to notice that American Athletic Conference champion Army (11-1) was denied a playoff bid because of its easy slate of opponents.
Meantime, The Athletic, a sports website hosted by the New York Times, writes that Alabama got “snubbed,” arguing that “if this was more of a data-driven process, Alabama would be in the Playoff instead of SMU.” But the data are on the committee’s side. Of the four BCS computer rankings that still publish the same versions of their assessments (Anderson & Hester, Billingsley, Colley, and Wolfe), all four rank SMU ahead of Alabama. Each concluded that Alabama’s schedule wasn’t tough enough to justify its extra loss. In other words, it was harder to go 11-2 with SMU’s schedule than to go 9-3 with Alabama’s. The Mustangs are therefore the more deserving team based on their accomplishments on the field this season.
But The Athletic doesn’t seem interested in on-field accomplishments. “Years of recruiting rankings will tell you Alabama has one of the most talented rosters in the country and that the SEC is where the most good football players can be found,” it declares. So what? Assembling talent is hardly the measure of athletic glory. Indeed, rather than rewarding teams for their accomplishments to date, The Athletic seems to care more about whom gamblers would favor, claiming that Alabama would be “a six-point favorite on a neutral field against SMU.” Even if this is true, it’s beside the point. Betting lines reflect which team is thought harder to beat going forward, not which team has earned a playoff bid based on its accomplishments to date.
In addition to the Mustangs’ having achieved a better record considering their schedule than the Crimson Tide, their losses were much closer. SMU’s only two losses came by a collective six points, on field goals that came in the final two minutes of a game. Alabama, by contrast, lost 24-3 to Oklahoma (6-6).
If Alabama should have been in the playoff field, their slot should have come at the expense not of SMU but of another SEC team, Tennessee (10-2). Since the Volunteers have a better win-loss record than Alabama and beat the Crimson Tide head-to-head (coming from behind in the fourth quarter to win by seven in Knoxville), this might seem like an odd claim. But look at it this way: Tennessee beat Alabama, Alabama beat Georgia, and Georgia beat Tennessee, with each winning at home. So, each team went 1-1 against the other two—which is a wash. Beyond that, Tennessee went 0-0 versus the current Top 25, while Alabama went 3-0 versus the Anderson & Hester Top 25 and 2-0 versus the committee’s Top 25 (which doesn’t include LSU). Beyond that, Alabama lost to #41 Oklahoma and #52 Vanderbilt, while Tennessee lost to #57 Arkansas. Based on its three Top 25 wins, Alabama has the better resume of these two SEC teams, and thus is ranked #11 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings to Tennessee’s #15.
What explains the committee’s choice of Tennessee, then, over Alabama? It’s not at all clear what strength-of-schedule (SOS) ratings the committee uses, but if those ratings look anything like ESPN’s flawed SOS ratings, that could provide part of the explanation. ESPN claims that Tennessee played the nation’s 28th-toughest schedule rather than the 66th-toughest, per the Anderson & Hester Rankings. Relatedly, ESPN says that Tennessee has a far better “strength of record” (factoring in schedule) than Alabama—#6 to #11—while the Anderson & Hester Rankings put Alabama’s “strength of record” at #11 and Tennessee’s at #15.
One problem with ESPN’s strength-of-schedule ratings is that when a team plays an opponent so weak that they aren’t among the 134 Football Bowl Subdivision squads—the nation’s highest-level football programs—that doesn’t appear to affect the team’s SOS at all. Since almost every SEC team plays at least one non-FBS team (Texas was the lone exception), this provides an undeserved advantage for the conference. No SEC team played a Top 5 schedule, according to the Anderson & Hester Rankings, yet the ESPN-published SOS says that the five toughest schedules were all played by SEC teams. Every one of those SEC teams played—but apparently did not have its schedule affected by playing—a non-FBS team.
According to the Anderson & Hester Rankings, Michigan played the nation’s toughest schedule, with a brutal four games versus the Top 10 and no non-FBS opponent; the Wolverines were followed by UCLA, which played three Top 10 foes and no non-FBS teams. The ESPN-published SOS rankings place these teams’ schedules seventh and 12th, respectively. USC, another team that played only FBS opposition, played the fourth-toughest schedule per the Anderson & Hester Rankings yet only the 31st-toughest per ESPN. Going forward, the committee should be more transparent about the SOS ratings that it uses, and certainly shouldn’t rely on the ESPN ones.
Some SEC fans are chafing at the Big Ten’s having gotten more teams into the playoff field (four) than the SEC (three). The SEC, however, had a lot of good-but-not-great teams this season; the conference has a whopping six teams ranked between #11 and #25 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings (to the Big Ten’s two). But the Big Ten has four entries among the top seven teams (to the SEC’s two).
As for who the third SEC team in the playoff should have been, the committee wasn’t realistically going to buck the conference standings (Tennessee was 6-2 and Alabama 5-3), the head-to-head result, and the AP poll (which ranks Tennessee #7 and Alabama #11)—even though the Crimson Tide played five of the top eight SEC teams to the Volunteers’ two.
In all, the committee did a good job. As for Alabama’s arguably being more deserving of a playoff berth than Tennessee, the Crimson Tide should take that matter up with their rivals to the north, not with the deserving Mustangs of SMU.
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