Why the CFP selection committee got it right by including Alabama | Goodbread
We can all be sure the College Football Playoff selection committee wasn't watching Saturday night's ACC Championship Game wearing Louisville Cardinals pajamas under their suits, or holding UL coozies to keep their beers cold, but they might as well have. That's not to say the CFP's brain trust had a bias or a rooting interest in the game itself, but there can be little doubt they wanted their decision on the 2023 four-team field to be as easy as it's been almost every year in the nine years it's existed.
They wouldn't be human if they didn't.
GOODBREAD: Is Alabama in or out of the CFP? Either way, it's back on top with SECCG win over Georgia
SORRY, SEC?: Social media reacts to conference's potential College Football Playoff absence
A Louisville win would've made FSU a very easy ouster. Instead, what they got was the toughest call they've ever had, and the best reason imaginable to validate the CFP's new forage, coming in 2024, into a 12-team playoff field. But in the final year of the four-team field, the committee was obliged to do one of three things it loathed to be forced into.
One of three things it's never done before:
1 - Deny an undefeated Power Five team (FSU).
2 - Deny a one-loss Power Five team that boasted a win over a qualifier (Texas).
Or 3 - Deny the SEC champion (Alabama).
In the end, it chose to pinch an undefeated FSU team that now looks like a shell of its midseason self without injured QB Jordan Travis. That FSU owned the 58th-toughest schedule in the country, per ESPN, and that Alabama's schedule ranked fifth, was apparently of greater consequence than the Seminoles' zero in the loss column.
Committee chairman Boo Corrigan stated it very simply on ESPN: "Florida State is a different team without Jordan Travis ... we're talking about where things are today, not where we were three weeks ago or eight weeks ago."
The committee also wasn't going to kick a Texas team to the curb that scored a 10-point road win at Alabama in September, and instead settled on a Crimson Tide team that knocked off what had been the committee's No.1 team. Michigan, with a dominant win over Oklahoma State, took the No.1 seed, while unbeaten Washington took the No. 2 seed, followed by Texas at No. 3, and Alabama at No. 4.
The selection committee, meanwhile, knew from the moment FSU beat Louisville that it would catch unholy fire from either the Alabama camp, FSU supporters, or Longhorn nation. That fire will now come from Tallahassee, where Florida State did everything a team could do in finishing 13-0.
Alabama, however, was plainly one of the nation's best four teams at the end of the season by virtue of a win over Georgia. And the Crimson Tide will get a chance to close out the four-team playoff era with a seventh national championship under coach Nick Saban.
The selection committee, in the end, got it right.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23 and the Talkin' Tide podcast. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Why the CFP selection committee got it right by including Alabama
