Alabama football can't trust committee. SECCG a must win | Goodbread

AUBURN − The College Football Playoff got off to an early start for Alabama football on Saturday, and it won its first-round game against archrival Auburn, 27-20.

We're still a week away from the CFP selection committee announcing its 12-team playoff field, but the Crimson Tide already knew this much: a loss at Auburn would've taken UA out of the running, which in essence meant its playoff started on the Plains. And don't think for a minute that next week's SEC Championship Game against Georgia isn't also an elimination game.

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Alabama's level of trust in the selection committee to put it in the CFP field if it loses to Georgia should be zero. A year ago, the committee turned away a three-loss Alabama team that had an argument based on strength of schedule, but not a good enough argument. Fast-forward to the offseason, when the CFP announced that strength of schedule would be taken more seriously in deliberations, and it smelled an awful lot like romance between the CFP and Alabama.

Turned out, the roses were dead.

Suffice it to say the eyes of the committee met Alabama's from across the room, but in the weekly rankings of late, there has been neither a wink nor a nod. Dropping Alabama behind Notre Dame to 10th in the rankings with its loss to Oklahoma was a criminally senseless rejection of the strength of schedule factor. Notre Dame's most impressive wins don't stack nearly as high as Alabama's, and both have the same 10-2 record.

The committee's message to Alabama has been clear: It's not impressed.

Not with its strength of schedule, not with its eight-game win streak, and beating a 5-6 Auburn team Saturday night won't impress it, either. The Crimson Tide would be foolish to consider its rematch with Georgia at Mercedes-Benz Stadium anything but a second-round playoff game.

Of course, if Alabama plays Georgia close and loses by a tightly contested score, the pressure on the committee not to penalize Alabama for playing a 13th game will be palpable. It's not impossible that the sel-com would bow to that pressure, but the likelihood of it is nothing on which UA should depend. League commissioner Greg Sankey would, no doubt, be infuriated. At 10-2, Alabama would certainly make the playoff absent its participation in the SEC Championship Game; therefore, the viability of the game itself would rightly be called into question.

In fact, it already has, by yours truly.

Actions speak louder than words, and the committee's actions to this point have done nothing but point to Alabama's game against the Bulldogs being another must-win for the Crimson Tide.

The playoffs started for Alabama on Saturday, and it advanced to Round Two in Atlanta.

The committee is just there to assign Round Three.

Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama football can't trust CFP committee, so SECCG is a must win