Alabama outside of top four, but could be No. 1 when dust settles

Alabama is on the outside looking in at the top four of the College Football Playoff, ranked No. 5 in Tuesday’s rankings, but when it’s all said and done, the Tide could be in the No. 1 spot.

'Bama is one of the teams in the top 10 of the CFP rankings that seemingly controls its own destiny and the Tide certainly has the strength of schedule to turn those rankings around.

That is, of course, if they can win out.

The Tide will play three ranked games in their final four contests (the other is Western Carolina), starting with this weekend’s game at No. 16 LSU. The Tide also have games against No. 1 Mississippi State and No. 3 Auburn remaining.

Win all of those games — and Western Carolina – and the committee would have a hard time not declaring the Tide the No. 1 team in the country.

Now before Florida State fans start crying foul, think about this: TCU, which is ranked No. 6, has wins against teams that at the time were ranked No. 4, No. 15 and No. 20 in the AP rankings, more quality wins than Alabama to date. (Not to mention a razor-thin loss to a then-No. 5 Baylor.) Yet, Jeff Long, chairman of the College Football Playoff selection committee, said when the committee compared the tape of TCU and the tape of Alabama, Alabama looked like the better team.

“The committee members compared those teams and at the end of the day we felt like Alabama, at this point thus far in the season, is a better team and deserves a higher ranking,” Long said.

Now add in assumed wins against three ranked teams, including two in the top three (Auburn and Mississippi State), and the Tide have the résumé of a championship team.

But Alabama isn’t the only team that controls its destiny, the Pac-12 has an interesting conundrum with Oregon and Arizona State. Both teams should be in if they win out. Oregon is already No. 4 with games against Utah, Colorado and Oregon State remaining. Arizona State ascended five spots from last week with a win against Utah and now has games against No. 10 Notre Dame, Oregon State, Washington State and No. 19 Arizona. If both teams win out, they’ll play in the Pac-12 title game and it will be almost impossible to keep the winner out.

That spells bad news for a team like TCU, which has just one quality game remaining — this weekend’s contest against No. 7 Kansas State. If Alabama doesn’t win out, the Horned Frogs could move into No. 5, but it would be difficult for it to supplant any of the teams in front of them without a little help. The best-case scenario for TCU is Alabama losing to either LSU or Mississippi State (or both) and beating Auburn.

Of course, all of this is conjecture with four weeks remaining in the regular season and a slew of scenarios available. There are 12 one-loss teams remaining within the Power Five conferences (counting Notre Dame) and six play each other this weekend.

So the chances of these rankings being the same next week are very slim.

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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter! Follow @YahooDrSaturday

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