Somehow, College Football Playoff Must Include Georgia Nemesis Alabama

Nick Saban has it exactly right. No way, you can have a College Football Playoff without his Alabama Crimson Tide. They are among the primary reasons for the NCAA’s healthy revenue numbers this century, including $1.15 billion in 2021 to surpass its pre-pandemic mark of $1.12 billion in 2019.

Besides . . .

Alabama is pretty good.

Alabama is extremely good. In fact, despite the Crimson Tide’s shoddy record by their standards — meaning it contains, not one, but two losses — they are the only team in the country that could keep the University of Georgia from rolling to a second consecutive national championship.

It’s not Michigan, and it’s not TCU, both with significantly less talent than a Georgia program that USA Today said finished third, fourth, first, second and first (going backward from 2022) during each of the past five recruiting cycles. It’s not defensively-challenged Southern Cal or Ohio State, even if the Buckeyes make the CFP after they were embarrassed Saturday at home by Michigan.

It’s the only college football program that has recruited as well (or slightly better) than Georgia during the past five years, and it’s also the last college football program to grab back-to-back titles.

Saban’s Alabama teams of 2011 and 2012.

As for the present one, which routed arch-rival Auburn 49-27 Saturday at home in Tuscaloosa during the Iron Bowl for a 10th victory this year — that group of Tide players should become the first two-loss selection of the CFP since its inception in 2014. More specifically, the CFP should take Alabama because of everything Saban told ESPN Saturday after the Auburn victory.

It all made sense.

“I don’t make those decisions, but I know what a resilient football team this has been,” Saban said to ESPN before delivering more truth. “We’ve lost two games to top-10 opponents, both on the last play of the game and both on the road. We could have easily won both games but didn’t. We’re a good football team and hopefully people will recognize that and we’ll get a chance.”

About those two Alabama losses: You could make the case they were flukes, because they mostly were. They came against No. 5 LSU in November and No. 10 Tennessee in October , and they both were on the road at stadiums that nearly invented the term “hostile environment.”

It almost didn’t matter to The Tide, and they had Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Bryce Young with such a banged up throwing right shoulder that he barely practiced for a month. Still, Young kept his Tide close to slaying Tennessee until they dropped a 52-49 thriller in Knoxville on a Tennessee field goal at the end that barely wobbled over the crossbar.

Then came a 32-31 loss in overtime for Alabama against an LSU team that converted a two-point conversion.

“We’ve had a lot of close games, didn’t always play our best in those games, but did enough to get to 10 wins and hung in there as a team,” Saban told ESPN, and here’s why we should trust what this guy says about all things Alabama and college football: He captured seven national championships, which included one at LSU and six at Alabama, where he grabbed his last ring after the national championship game for the 2020 season when his Tide flattened Ohio State 52-24.

Three years before that, Saban secured Title No. 6, and it was against Georgia led by Kirby Smart, Saban’s former defensive coordinator who took over the Bulldogs before the 2016 season. Saban and Smart combined at Alabama for four SEC championships and four national titles.

Later, during the first four games that Smart’s Bulldogs faced Saban’s Tide, Georgia led or was tied in 171 of those 240 minutes. Georgia still went 0-4 against Alabama, and that included the national championship game in January 2018, two SEC Championship Games and a regular season game.

Smart finally beat his old boss last January for the national championship with a 33-18 victory in Indianapolis, but given those other Georgia-Alabama games involving Kirby against Nick, here’s the question: Was that national championship game last January another fluke of a loss for Alabama?

Which is yet another reason to include the Tide this year in the CFP’s Final Four.

Let’s find out.