Following Alabama’s 21-23 setback against Oklahoma in Week 12, a predictable drop in the latest College Football Playoff rankings followed, but the Crimson Tide falling behind Notre Dame became the real point of contention.
After sliding to No. 10 in the CFP’s third Top 25 release, Kalen DeBoer's Alabama now trails Marcus Freeman's Fighting Irish with an identical (8-2) record, and CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek laid out precisely why.
During Tuesday’s teleconference following the rankings reveal, Notre Dame’s scoring margin and the caliber of its losses ultimately carried more weight, as Yurachek explained.
“You look at Notre Dame, they’ve got a win against Southern Cal and a dominating win against a Pitt team that was ranked in our Top 25.”
Both teams share two losses and enter the stretch run riding lengthy winning streaks. Alabama won eight straight after its season-opening defeat, while Notre Dame’s eight-game surge continued with last weekend’s road win at Pitt. The chair also added that strength-of-losses was the final separator.
“Really, when you break these teams down and the comparison [between] Notre Dame and Alabama, Notre Dame has two losses to teams that are within the Top 13, a three-point loss against Miami to start the season and then a one-point loss against Texas A&M. Alabama, obviously, has the two-point loss at home last week to 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, and 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.”
Yurachek’s evaluation emphasized an Alabama run game that ranks near the bottom of the SEC at 108.7 yards per outing, a flaw that resurfaced in recent weeks and factored into the committee’s decision.
Yurachek explained that the committee deliberated heavily over the cluster of teams around the 9-11 range.
“We probably spent more time in our committee room comparing two or three teams at that band with Oklahoma, Notre Dame and Alabama. … Alabama had that string where they had four really strong wins at Georgia, against Vanderbilt, Missouri, and Tennessee,” Yurachek said, providing context for the overall résumé.
With two games left and several ranked matchups on the horizon nationally, Alabama still has opportunities to shift the narrative, but the fact remains that this slip in latest rankings marked the second time the program has ever been ranked and its first appearance since 1959.
