The Alabama Crimson Tide cannot afford to lose to Florida in the SEC Championship game this weekend.
That’s not to say that the Crimson Tide wouldn’t make the College Football Playoff if it should lose to the Gators this weekend. According to the Colley Matrix, Alabama has four wins against the top 25 and eight wins against the top 50. The Tide has also played the 10th toughest schedule in the land. With a resume like that, there’s no way that the Selection Committee would leave Bama out of the field, even if it were to lose to Florida 222-0.
However, the fact that Saban’s squad is already in the field does not mean that it can afford to lose in the SEC championship game.
A quick look back at the now-defunct BCS system will prove this point perfectly. In 2001, Nebraska entered the final week of the regular season ranked No. 1 in the BCS standings. Despite a blowout loss to Colorado in the season finale – which cost the team a chance to play for the Big 12 title – the Cornhuskers played in the BCS Championship game. Miami beat Nebraska 37-14 in a contest that seemed a lot more lopsided than the final score would indicate.
The same thing happened with Oklahoma in 2003. Like Alabama this year, the Sooners were the most dominant team in college football that season. In fact, Oklahoma was so firmly entrenched as the top team in the country that a 35-14 loss to Kansas State failed to knock them out of the top spot in the BCS rankings. Although the Sooners would fare better than Nebraska did two years earlier, they lost in the national championship game to LSU (which was coached by Nick Saban).
These two historical anecdotes show why this weekend’s SEC championship game is a must-win for Alabama. Sure, the Crimson Tide could – and probably will – make the field with a loss, but as Saban correctly pointed out, that’s not the mindset his team needs to be in. It needs to focus on the task at hand, or it could end up as an obscure footnote in college football history like the teams listed above.
