Would Alabama Still Make the Playoff Even If Tide Lose to Missouri?

Breaking Bad won the 2014 Emmy Award for "Best Drama Series," even though the best drama series in America is known as "the college football regular season."

If more drama breaks out over championship weekend, Alabama would prefer not to be nominated.

The Crimson Tide enter the SEC Championship Game with the No. 1 ranking attached to their name, an SEC title in their sights and the top seed in the inaugural College Football Playoff within their reach.

What if it slips through their fingertips, though?

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

SEC East champion Missouri again came out of nowhere in 2014 to claim its second straight division title and will enter the Georgia Dome riding a wave of momentum generated from last weekend's 21-14 win over Arkansas in Columbia.

"Coach [Gary] Pinkel, my old teammate, has done a fantastic job," Alabama head coach Nick Saban said on Sunday. "They have a very good team. It's going to be a real challenge for our team."

If it's too much of a challenge and Missouri—a two-touchdown underdog as of Monday, according to OddsShark.com—springs the upset, what happens to Alabama?

Brynn Anderson/Associated Press

The primary problem for the Crimson Tide would be No. 14 Missouri.

Sure, the Tigers have a loss to woeful Indiana on their resume, but a conference championship and a head-to-head victory over the Crimson Tide on championship weekend would relegate Saban's crew behind Pinkel's in the College Football Playoff pecking order.

Both programs would need a ton of help, and several dominoes around the country would need to fall for the Tide to get in position to make the bracket.

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Forget the Pac-12 Championship Game, because regardless of what happens at Levi's Stadium, if Missouri wins the SEC title, the Pac-12 winner will be above both SEC contenders. Oregon would be a no-brainer, and if the Ducks win on Friday night and Alabama loses, they'll likely be the top seed. If Arizona springs the upset, it will have two wins over Oregon on its resume, and that'll be too much for the committee to ignore.

At that point, the Crimson Tide would need three upsets to happen out of the four biggest games of the final weekend of the season.

• No. 9 Kansas State at No. 5 Baylor
• No. 3 Florida State vs. No. 12 Georgia Tech
• Iowa State at No. 5 TCU
• No. 11 Wisconsin vs. No. 6 Ohio State

If three of those four games are upsets, Missouri would probably jump the winners and Alabama will likely stay ahead of those winners as well. Would Kansas State, Georgia Tech and Wisconsin have championships to boast to the committee? Yep, and that matters.

That might not be enough to get in over a high-profile program like Alabama, though.

At that point, you'd be looking at a playoff that includes the Pac-12 champion, the one team of the four listed that doesn't fall on the final weekend of the year, Missouri and Alabama.

That'd be the only path, and even that path would be littered with multiple-loss teams with conference championships in their back pockets, something that Alabama wouldn't have if it loses to Missouri. 

So Crimson Tide fans, for insurance purposes, you might want to root for more chaos this weekend in places other than the Georgia Dome. If contenders fall, it'd make the Crimson Tide's path to a national title a beat easier and keep the door open if Missouri's magical run continues.

Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a co-host of the CFB Hangover on Bleacher Report Radio (Sundays, 9-11 a.m. ET) on Sirius 93, XM 208.

Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of cfbstats.com, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.