ESPN’s College Football Playoff expert, Heather Dinich has Alabama missing the playoff but remaining at No. 11 in the rankings.
Dinich feels Clemson and Arizona State will block the Crimson Tide from the playoff with their automatic bids in large part due to how SMU competed against the Tigers in the ACC Championship game.
“I think that they’re going to have SMU in and Alabama out,” Dinich said. “One of the reasons I say that is because at the end of the night, the selection committee is watching all of these games together, and the last thing they see is the ACC and Big Ten championships before they go in and they start to debate this. And if you would have ask me in the first half of that game if SMU is in, I would say absolutely not. The second half of that game, I say that they are. And we have to look at member selection committee chair Warde Manuel’s comments entering this week and that was how they thought about these teams entering Championship weekend is going to continue to resonate in that room.”
The official College Football Playoff field will be announced Sunday live on ESPN.
