Among the many surprises of the 2024 college football season, the SMU Mustangs, in their first year of play in the ACC, making it to the College Football Playoff may have been the biggest. Sure, Indiana having their best season in program history was a colossal surprise, as was Arizona State winning the Big 12 after being picked last in the preseason poll. But SMU emerging as one of the best teams in the ACC after remaining dormant for decades following their 1987 ‘death penalty’ was something very few analysts saw coming.
But in the hours leading up to the reveal of the CFP bracket, it looked like the Mustangs had blown their chance of making the field of 12 thanks to a loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. However, the CFP selection committee opted to give the final at-large bid to SMU, leaving more prestigious programs such as Alabama, Miami, and Ole Miss out of the field.
Alabama’s omission was certainly the most glaring, as the Crimson Tide had made the four-team CFP field in eight of the previous ten seasons. Even Rhett Lashlee, who will be entering his fourth season as the Mustangs head coach, believes the Tide should’ve made the cut.
"I felt like we definitely deserved to be in, but after we came up just short about 12 hours earlier in that ACC Championship game with Clemson, I cannot say I felt great," Lashlee told The Next Round earlier this week. "The way it looked like it was shaping up to be us or Alabama, which I'm not sure that's the way it should've shaped up. I think maybe we both should’ve been in.”
A statement such as this one requires a very important follow-up question… so where did the selection committee go wrong then? If Alabama and SMU both should’ve made the field of 12, does that mean Indiana (the 10-seed) should’ve been left out of the field?
Does Lashlee believe that Alabama should’ve made the field over SEC foe Tennessee?
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Or does it mean that if Lashlee had it his way, automatic bids for conference champions should be cut, meaning either Boise State or Clemson would’ve ended up getting the short end of the stick?
An assertion such as this one only highlights the built-in issues with a postseason format which relies on a selection committee to field and seed it’s teams… it’s subjective. Beauty remains in the eye of the beholder, where in professional sports leagues such as the NFL and NBA, the standings are the truth and there’s no other way around it. Of course, this only adds to the intrigue for the NCAA, so there’s no reason to expect things to change any time soon.