The latest College Football Playoff rankings have been released, and after a thrilling weekend, some teams moved around. That’s the case for Alabama, a team that lost to a top-11 team and fell nearly out of the top 12. They have every right to be upset with this treatment.

Alabama deserves better in latest College Football Playoff reveal

The Alabama Crimson Tide have maybe the best resume in college football, but you’d never know that based on the College Football Playoff rankings this week. The committee was supposed to be better than the AP or the coaches who rank teams every week. Those lists essentially just look at who won and who lost and move them slightly up or slightly down accordingly. Alabama losing meant they had to drop from fourth, right?

That may be true, but how far they dropped is telling. Oklahoma is now the eighth-best team in the nation, and the Crimson Tide nearly beat them (and probably should have). Sure, a loss is a loss, but this is a good loss if ever there was one. So dropping them six spots, more than every team other than Texas, is alarming and probably unfair. Strictly based on the most recent outcomes, the 10 spot feels much too harsh for the Crimson Tide.

But it gets worse when you take a wider look at it. The Tide are now 8-2. Their two losses are to the number eight team in the country and a Week 1 loss to Florida State, but Week 1 was ages ago, and the committee seems to be much more forgiving of early losses (see, Notre Dame’s placement).

It’s hard to justify a few teams being ahead of the Tide right now. Two-loss Notre Dame has only one ranked win, and it’s over number 15 USC. Oregon hasn’t beaten a single ranked team, and they have a loss on the record as well. Alabama? Well, they’ve beaten Georgia (number four), Vanderbilt (14), Tennessee (20), and Missouri (22). It’s hard to find a better resume in all of college football, yet the Tide are barely in the playoff conversation.

Historically, the committee has been pretty good about weighing things and reacting to the data we have. For example, while it was a tough pill to swallow, leaving an unbeaten Florida State team out of the playoff after a lackluster win and losing their starting QB proved to be the right choice, because that version of FSU that year got blown out in their bowl game, and the field in the four-team playoff was stronger. There is always a debate on the final weekend about how teams win. The context has always mattered, so when number one Georgia lost and the teams right behind them won, they still only slid to fourth because of how good they’d been and the team they lost to (ironically, it was Alabama).

Now, it seems that the prior logic the committee used is gone. Is Georgia really six spots better than Alabama? The Tide beat them, so it’s hard to make that claim. The Bulldogs have a better record, but is one game enough to put six spots of distance after a head-to-head loss? Typically, the committee would’ve said no. This seems to not be the same committee, though, and Alabama has every right to be upset with this outcome. At worst, the Crimson Tide should be a top-seven team, because they’re arguably better than several teams ranked above them. It doesn’t always play out that way, but this is one of the more egregious rankings this year. Hopefully, next week, the committee will rectify this oversight.