The College Football Playoff committee's greatest fears came true last Saturday night when No. 8 Alabama upset No. 1 Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. How could the committee leave out the SEC Champion—something it had never done since the inception of the playoff—and, better yet, how could it then leave out Texas football, who had also won the Big 12 Championship?
The point of contention for Nick Saban's team getting into the top-4 was that if Texas won their respective conference championship, then how could they be left out while Alabama was put in? They would be leapfrogging the Big 12 Champions. The Longhorns held the best victory of the regular season when they beat the Crimson Tide on the road in Tuscaloosa during Week 2.
Their only blemish was that from their arch-rival in Oklahoma a few weeks later. If Texas would have been upset by Oklahoma State in the Big 12 title game, then it's a moot point—Alabama is the better team with only one loss and a win over the No. 1 team in the country. But that didn't happen, and the Longhorns routed the Cowboys by a score of 49-21.
Texas-Alabama Week 2 game was bigger than originally thought
If you reflect back on the 2023 college football season, the Week 2 matchup between Texas and Alabama is a keystone moment. Many thought that with Texas' double-digit win over Alabama—34-24—we had finally seen the beginning of the end for Alabama, with a second consecutive year without the 18-time national champions in the playoff.
It seemed fitting; Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was one of the few former Saban assistants to beat his former boss. Not only that, but the way in which the Longhorns handled the Crimson Tide on that September night, where they were able to control the entire game, made it feel like an end of an era, and perhaps the beginning of a new one with Texas finally being able to utter those words, “We're back.”
It was the first sign of a Texas team in almost two decades that had felt superior to all others in the country. But then when the Longhorns lost in the Red River Rivalry game, it brought back a flood of memories, reminding everyone of years of upsets, where previous team had fizzled out and were without so much as even a conference championship to celebrate.
With many scares along the way during the 2023 season—they only beat Kansas State and TCU in back-to-back weeks by a total of six points—Texas football found themselves back in the Big 12 Championship, winning their first title since 2009. Would that be good enough to warrant a top-4 ranking after spending the entire five weeks of the CFP rankings at No. 7?
It was, but not without some likely unwanted company.
Alabama used loss against Texas football to propel them into top-4
Per usual, Alabama football has made everyone's life difficult, including the committees. Beating the top-ranked team in the country, for a conference championship no less, presented plenty of arguments to allow them a top-4 ranking. But to do so, they'd have to jump a whopping four spots, and over Texas, who beat them.
For the CFP committee to justify Alabama's top-4 ranking, even above a 13-0 conference champion Florida State team, they had to place Texas in the top-4 as well. If Texas doesn't find their way into the top-4 and Alabama did, then the committee has an even bigger issue on hand than what they do now, with their legitimacy coming into question even more.
The No. 3 Longhorns have become an unexpected catalyst for the No. 4 Crimson Tide's resurgence. Alabama's loss to Texas, though it was once thought to be the beginning of a downfall for the entire program, has ironically propelled the team forward. Alabama has been riding their loss to the Longhorns all season long… all the way back into the College Football Playoff.
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