You may think that, in the past two seasons, they put one-loss Alabama and one-loss Ohio State in even though they didn’t even win their division, let alone the conference. So, this year, if Alabama loses the conference championship game, they could still be in, right?
Not so fast my friend!
In the past two seasons, the committee could justify that the way to decide the division was somewhat unfair—games were played either home or away against one team. So, it causes advantages to one team and disadvantages to another. And both Ohio State in 2016 loss to Penn State and Alabama in 2017 loss to Auburn were both away games.
At the time, there was no clear better choice. In 2017, Wisconsin had one loss with no championship and then it’s UCF.
Now, this year, you have Oklahoma and, say, Ohio State with championship.
And Alabama loses to Georgia on a neutral site. That should already be a playoff right there.
So, I’m not saying it will definitely happen, but it’s possible. I’d like to think it’s likely.
Re: If Alabama loses, they could be out. Here’s why.
Dec 1, 2018, 6:38 PM
There's only one reason that Ohio State and Bama got in the past two years without being conference champions—they were both one loss teams compared to two loss conference champions.
That being said, I 'm still worried that there is a good chance that Bama would get in even if they lose today unless UGA ends up blowing them out.
I don’t want them to have a national title as they are in the same recruiting backyards as we are.
BTW, I agree about two losses. I think we can use it as a rule of thumb now—if you have two losses, you’re highly likely out, unless less than four teams have 0/1 loss.