Alabama Football: Is the Playoff a Danger to Teams Like the 2011 Crimson Tide?

The playoff system has essentially been agreed upon, and that is a step forward for college football.

Or is it?

The details regarding the criteria for selection into the four-team playoff have yet to be disclosed. (Of course, they have probably not yet been decided.)

Let's take a look at the 2011 BCS rankings following championship weekend and see how this could negatively affect teams like the Tide.

Undefeated team: LSU (1)

One-loss teams: Alabama (2), Oklahoma State (3), Stanford (4), Boise State (7)

Conference champions in the Top 10: LSU (1), Oregon (5), Wisconsin (10)

Conference leader in Top Five without an official championship game: Oklahoma State (3)

If the system is to involve the top four teams with an emphasis on conference champions, then the most logical scenario would be:

1) LSU

2) Alabama

3) Oklahoma State

4) Oregon

In that scenario, Oregon faces LSU in a rematch of the season opener and Oklahoma State faces Alabama for the right to play for all the marbles.

The legitimate question that this scenario raises is: What about Stanford?

LSU, Oklahoma State (unofficial) and Oregon are the conference champions, but Stanford outranks Oregon. Alabama outranks both of them.

What's the solution here? Does Oregon get to jump Stanford by virtue of the head-to-head victory? If so, why can't Oregon simply be left out of the playoff by virtue of the fact that LSU beat them by more than a touchdown?

Plus, if the head-to-head is the deciding factor there, wouldn't it be fair to leave Alabama out since they lost to LSU, too?

The fear here is what happens when the conference champion with a weaker strength of schedule has the opportunity to jump a conference runner-up with a higher ranking.

For a four-team playoff, 2011 was surprisingly straightforward. There were no gigantic questions until you stepped outside of the Top Five.

Now go back to 2010. What would you do then? You've got to go all the way down to the seventh-ranked team to get to a squad with more than one loss. Guess what? That two-loss team was Big 12 champion Oklahoma.

Holy crap, now we have a problem. Now we need an eight-team playoff just to pit the best of the best against each other.

If you're going to play the four-team playoff card, you've got to limit it to the top four teams. There's no other fair way to do it.

Yes, you run the risk of pitting four teams from a total of two conferences against each other. However, that risk is fairly small.

Most of the time, it will look like 2010:

1) Auburn (SEC)

2) Oregon (Pac-12)

3) TCU (MWC)

4) Stanford (Pac-12)

Three conferences are represented there, and the B1G champion sat at the fifth spot, just off the bubble.

In that scenario, where the teams in the fourth and fifth spots have identical records, the fifth-place conference champion should jump the fourth-place team to enter the playoffs.

Only if the fourth-place team is in a conference that already has representation and has the same W-L record as the fifth place team. Under any other circumstance, the fourth-place team should be advanced to the playoffs.

Is the current proposal a dangerous situation for the Tide? Yes, but not nearly as dangerous as Jim Delany's original stance.