Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Who are the big surprises in the 12 teamer?  Boise State a bit, certainly getting the bye, SMU for sure, Indiana for sure.... the rest I think are not shockers.  Missing out as a surprise is Bama of course and Ole Miss earlier in the season.  South Carolina was a surprise to me as a team that exceeded expectations.

Would never had guessed ASU at the beginning of the season. 

Would never had guessed ASU at the beginning of the season.

They were ranked last in the preseason conference poll.

Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said Sunday that he would need to assess his nonconference scheduling philosophy moving forward after the Crimson Tide were the first team left out of the 12-team College Football Playoff field.

In a post on X, Byrne said he was "disappointed" with the outcome and acknowledged the losses to .500 teams Vanderbilt and Oklahoma as "two games in particular that we did not perform as well as we should have."

But he also added that nonconference scheduling is an area that would have to be evaluated.

"We have said that we would need to see how strength of schedule would be evaluated by the CFP," Byrne wrote. "With this outcome, we will need to asses how many P4 nonconference 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."


Alabama played only one Power 4 nonconference game this year -- a 42-10 win at Wisconsin. But next year, the Crimson Tide have two Power 4 nonconference games -- at Florida State to open the season Aug. 30, and a return home game against Wisconsin on Sept. 13.

agreed

It's just that the Bammer AD is really gonna hafta work to make the OOC schedule crappier - Mercer, USF, Badgers, Western Kentucky!

adding a 2-10 FSU next year is like playin Mercer twice

sure as hell aren't gonna add that 9th conference game

How did Bama's noncon schedule harm their pedigree?  It didn't, at all, nor could they logically make it much weaker except by dropping a Wisconsin.  Go ahead with that, Bama, play four pastries instead of three, then lose 3 conference games and whine about being left out.

This is silly.  

UGA played two pretty tough opponents OOC and very nearly lost to one of them which would have left them ... in the playoff, with a bye.

College Football Playoff bracket predictions and bowl picks - ESPN

Not really  very illuminating in my view, "expert picks", OK then.

I expect "real" experts to largely agree on a thing, if indeed they are experts.

I don't think it's an Alabama thing, it's an overall thing.  If doing well vs the 60th-ranked schedule gets you in, don't bother with scheduling a 'name' OOC opponent when your conference schedule will be plenty strong enough.

I have to laugh at this a little bit because although one can argue the merits of it, it is literally the way that this is always gone. Losing a good game has basically always been punished more than winning a bad one. (although there might be some exception in the weird old poll era)

Ain’t no one raising a stink that the best at large team’s best opponents were 8-4, two 7-5s and then either a 7-5 team or 8-4 Mountain west team.