The Outkick featured an article about how Oklahoma’s loss to Navy was another big hit to all of ESPN’s crying over Bama and other SEC teams having been left out of the playoff. From the article linked below:
SEC fans went ballistic during the first round as Indiana and SMU lost their matchups in non-competitive games. Then went confusingly silent as Tennessee suffered the biggest blowout loss of the first round at Ohio State. Still, there remains a committed group of SEC fans and ESPN/SEC commentators who believe Alabama should have been included in the playoff. Even after a three-loss season.
That group suffered another blow to SEC supremacy on Friday afternoon thanks to the Oklahoma Sooners.
Oklahoma finished the regular season 6-6, despite a dominant 24-3 win over the same Alabama team that the collective hive mind of SEC/ESPN believed should have been in the expanded playoff. Their postseason reward was a matchup with Navy in the Armed Forces Bowl. And then after jumping out to a 14-0 lead, the Sooners gave up 21 straight points and lost on a failed two-point conversion 21-20.
Ouch.
The chief argument from Kirk Herbstreit and the SEC collective is that Alabama's losses were better because they were in the SEC. And of course, the mediocre teams in the SEC are actually great, compared to the mediocre teams in other conferences.
But Oklahoma is now a 6-7 team, and Alabama scored a grand total of three points against the Sooners, with a woeful 4.1 yards per play. That's the team that the entire conference lost its collective mind over?
Yes, Alabama has a high upside thanks to its elite talent on both sides of the ball. But its actual performance, on the field, not in hypothetical situations, did not warrant inclusion in the playoff. It's one thing if all of Alabama's losses were to teams at the top end of the sport. That's not what happened. Vanderbilt and Oklahoma were not good teams in 2024.
Had Alabama played to its potential in the games that happened, there wouldn't have been a debate. But the Tide didn't. They lost. To bad teams. At some point, they'll have to get over their entitlement and beat bad teams if they want to go 9-3 and get rewarded. Maybe next year.
The problem with trying to get their big name teams into the playoff based on being “better” rather than being most deserving is that they didn’t prove that on the field when it actually mattered. Folks guessing that Bama and others would have competed better than SMU and Indiana is something we’ll never know, so there’s no point in even speculating. What we do know is Herbie continues to make a bigger and bigger ass of himself the more he opens his crybaby mouth about the SEC. This SEC loss to Ohio-born Navy QB Horvath just made things even sweeter following the OSU curb-stomping of UT. Here’s to seeing this trend continue through the New Year! A B1G team (preferably OSU of course) vs Notre Dame in the finals is sounding mighty nice about now, and that would make two years in a row that all-northern teams comprised the finals. Go Bucks!
https://www.outkick.com/sports/sec-takes-another-hit-oklahoma-loss-navy
