“We want to be a part of that,” DeBoer said. “We want that to happen. That’s the exciting thing about college football, is being in as many big games as possible. We don’t want to back down to that, we want to be a part of it. And, you know, that hopefully will be rewarded down the road.”
The crux of Alabama’s playoff grievance is that it wasn’t rewarded for playing in, and winning difficult games. The Tide beat the likes of Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri, all of which finished in the top 25, with the Bulldogs winning the SEC title game Saturday.
The losses that knocked Alabama out of the field came at the hands of Oklahoma and Vanderbilt, which doesn’t help the strength of schedule argument. Still, DeBoer and company felt the committee overvalued number of wins, rather than quality, when it placed SMU in the field over the Tide.
“It definitely wasn’t rewarded, it felt like,” DeBoer said. “With our schedule and the wins we had against teams that were ranked, now ranked or even ranked at the time, because I think even an LSU was ranked at the time but isn’t anymore, but we’ll have to, I’ll let Greg administratively lead the charge to better understand what needs to be done in the future, if anything at all.”
Alabama will instead play in the ReliaQuest Bowl against Michigan. Hardly a satisfying end for a Crimson Tide season that once seemed on track for SEC championship and playoff appearances.
It was disappointing news for DeBoer, but he took away a lesson for the future.
“There’s things that we gotta do and could have done this year, but got to make sure that it’s not in other people’s hands,” DeBoer said. “We’ll keep ourselves focused on that next year.”
Alabama and Michigan will face off in Tampa on Dec. 31.
