Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne is sending a message to the College Football Playoff selection committee after the Crimson Tide were left out of the field on Sunday.
Byrne said he was “disappointed” that the Crimson Tide did not make the 12-team field, particularly because the team had played a difficult schedule in 2024. The athletic director suggested that since their high strength of schedule was not rewarded with a playoff berth, the Crimson Tide might look at playing easier non-conference slates in the future.
“We have said that we would need to see how strength of schedule would be evaluated by the CFP,” Byrne wrote on X. “With this outcome, we will need to asses how many (Power 4) non-conference games make sense in the future to put us in the best position to participate in the CFP. That is not good for college football.”
Disappointed with the outcome and felt we were one of the 12 best teams in the country. We had an extremely challenging schedule and recognize there were two games in particular that we did not perform as well as we should have.
We have said that we would need to see how…
— Greg Byrne (@Greg_Byrne) December 8, 2024
Alabama’s most difficult non-conference game in 2024 was at Wisconsin, which looked more prestigious at the start of the year. They beat the Badgers in Madison, but that Wisconsin team wound up going 5-7. Outside of that, the Tide played Western Kentucky, South Florida, and Mercer, none of which are particularly difficult games. Much of Alabama’s strength of schedule came from simply playing its SEC slate.
Alabama was left out instead of SMU, an 11-2 team out of the ACC. That Alabama was even in contention despite going 9-3 and not making the SEC Championship suggests their strength of schedule did help them immensely, and that they would not have been considered without it. In fact, it’s safe to argue that had Alabama won even one of the three games they lost, they would have made the field.
On the other hand, if a standard SEC schedule is already tough enough to put Alabama in consideration, Byrne is right that there is not much benefit to them playing high-profile non-conference games. That is precisely the scenario Nick Saban warned about earlier Sunday after Alabama was left out.
