Alabama climbs one spot to #9 in latest CFP Rankings

Over the last 24 hours, there was a decent bit of chatter surrounding betting odds that Alabama’s odds of making the playoffs jumped significantly. Plus, BetMGM apparently locked betting on the Tide. Was there a leak in the playoff committee’s rankings? Quite possibly.

In any case, the Tide has now moved up to #9, swapping spots with Notre Dame.

Now, maybe the Committee noticed that Alabama rushed for more than 100 yards in a win over Auburn, and that finally got them on board with the Crimson Tide. It is an important criteria for a playoff resume, to be sure. Or maybe the Texas A&M loss just hurt ND’s schedule?

To be frank, the Auburn game looked pretty much just like all of Alabama’s other games lately, and Yurachek is now praising the Tide for the same things he docked them for a week ago. It makes little sense.

More likely, the Committee realized they had backed themselves into a corner having Alabama ranked 10th. If the Tide lost the SEC Championship and BYU beat Texas Tech, then they’d HAVE to leave out one team that played in a conference championship game. This way, though, Notre Dame can be the fall guy in the event we get some upsets this weekend, and they can be consistent with some of their previous messaging (and the SEC and others maybe won’t burn things to the ground over the conference title games).

Texas, meanwhile, is the highest ranked 3-loss team, and this likely signals that their advocating over the last few days was to no avail.

After the release, Alabama’s odds to make the Playoffs has rocketed up to -1250 in the FanDuel sportsbook. A week ago, the Tide was only at -210.

I sure am glad Alabama got 100 rushing yards!

With that, the SEC Championship is now a fairly low-stakes contest, at least in terms of the playoffs. Things could always change if Alabama gets absolutely embarrassed or something, but for now, the Tide seems to be on track for a post season appearance.

Roll Tide!