Kalen DeBoer Questions Alabama's 2024 CFP Bracket Snub, Cites Strength of Schedule

The 2024 Alabama Crimson Tide went 9-4, lost to 7-6 Vanderbilt and 6-7 Oklahoma, and finished as the runner-up in the ReliaQuest Bowl, but they still seem upset they didn't make the College Football Playoff five months later.

"You wonder what would have happened if other people would have played our schedule," head coach Kalen DeBoer told reporters Tuesday.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart, who led his team to the CFP, also explained he believed more schools from the SEC should have been in the 12-team field than the three (Georgia, Texas and Tennessee) that made the cut.

"There's no outcry saying it's unfair when the SEC gets 13 of 16 teams in the basketball tournament by using RPI," Smart told reporters. "I have a hard time thinking Ole Miss, South Carolina and Alabama were not part of the best teams in the country."

While the SEC coaches can suggest that strength of schedule didn't play a role and it was instead simply determined by the number of losses each team had during the regular season, that simply wasn't true.

Alabama lost three games in the regular season but still found itself ranked ahead of two-loss Arizona State, two-loss Miami and two-loss BYU from other power conferences. And its strength of schedule that included victories over Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri was the only reason it was even in CFP debates despite the three losses, two of which were particularly ugly.

Perhaps if the Crimson Tide had scored more than three points against an Oklahoma team that didn't beat another FBS opponent after September, they would have had a better case to be included in the CFP field.

And the arguments coming just one season after Alabama made the four-team CFP over an undefeated Florida State team make them ring even more hollow.

Fortunately for the Crimson Tide, they will be in a position to play themselves into the CFP in 2025 with notable games against Florida State, Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee. If they do, the 2024 campaign will be a distant memory.