College Football Angst Watch 2024: Week 15 (Dixie)
The State of Angst
Last week, the College Football Playoff Committee selected the twelve teams who will compete for the national title. There is a great deal to say about this bracket. For example, do we really need 12 teams in the playoff? Eight seems like enough. Hell, we were doing just fine with four. Of the teams that appear in the bracket, only four have a realistic shot—Oregon, Georgia, Texas, and Penn State—and, lo and behold, they were the top four teams in the rankings.
“But Dan,” you might be saying, sneaking a smidge of whiskey into your morning coffee because you have a problem everybody knows about but no one wants to address, “the numbers in front of those teams say, ‘1, 2, 5, and 6.’ How can those be the top four in the rankings?”
Well, reader, that’s not just your hangover confusing you. The bracket is just confused. Not confusing. Confused. The committee ranks teams, then the committee slots in the highest ranking conference champions into spots 1, 2, 3, and 4, then they slot in the remaining highest ranking teams into spots 5 through twelve. This creates an odd incentive structure where finishing fifth or sixth gets you the easiest path to the finals.
And if you’re drinking whiskey with your morning coffee, you’re probably an Alabama Crimson Tide fan. I imagine you’re very upset because the selection committee ranked the Tide 11th but, as a consequence of the bracketing format, they were left out of the playoff.
Retired Alabama Head Coach and deez nuts joke enthusiast Nick Saban co-hosted the selection show and couldn’t hide his disappointment that his former team didn’t make the cut even though the Tide finished the season with three loses.
One was a near shutout against the Oklahoma Sooners. The other was the Vanderbilt Commodore’s first win over Alabama since Ronald Reagan was president—because Vanderbilt is a historically bad football program. They have a sub-500 all-time record. Two of their eight undefeated seasons came during World War II, an era in which Vandy was only playing between four and five games a season because Japan, Italy, and a guy with a funny mustache.
Saban argued that the 2024 Alabama Crimson Tide’s nine wins were so impressive that the two oops-I-accidentally-joined-a-UFO-cult level embarrassments should not overshadow impressive wins over Georgia (a game they won by having their quarterback shout, “500!” before heaving the ball downfield multiple times) and, um… uh… a two-point win over South Carolina, I guess.
“All wins are not the same as other wins,” Saban said. “In other words, what we’ve always done publicly in college is look at record. We don’t look at strength of schedule. We don’t look at all those types of things.”
This somehow led to a week of Alabama fans saying that Alabama being left out of the playoff disincentives teams to play difficult out of conference teams which is an extremely weird argument to make because all three of Alabama’s loses came against in-conference opponents, two of which—and this cannot be stressed enough—were very not-good football teams.
I could go into detail here describing Alabama fan’s despondency by doing something vaguely resembling journalism. But, in the tradition of American folk music, I feel the best way to describe disappointment in the American South is in song.
So, pick up a guitar, sit down in front of a piano, and learn the chords for The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” If you’re unfamiliar with the tune, The Last Waltz performance is the best version of it.
So. Without further ado, I give you the lyric for—
“The Night They Drove Old ‘Bama Down”
Chip Dagney’s the name and I cheered for the Crimson Tide
when the Commodores came and upset my boys for good.
It was early in the year, week five, just barely alive.
I blinked and Tennessee won. It’s a time I remember oh so well.
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
deez nuts were ringing.
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
all the people were singing, they went:
You lost to Vanderbilt,
na-na-na-na, na-na-na-nah, na.
Back with my wife in Birmingham, when one day she called to me,
said, “Chip, quick, come and see, Coach Nick is on TV.”
Now I don’t mind paying kids, and I don’t care if it’s Georgia who bids.
You take the next and you scorn the rest,
but Saban, he never should’ve left.
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
deez nuts were ringing.
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
all the people were singing, they went:
You lost to Vanderbilt,
na-na-na-na, na-na-na-nah, na.
Like the fans before me, I will stay mad.
And like the team I love, I can’t take an L.
We were good, nine and three, but committees laid us in our grave.
and I’ve never felt this down and this low.
Who wants a bowl when it’s just for show?
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
deez nuts were ringing.
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
all the people were singing, they went:
You lost to Vanderbilt,
na-na-na-na, na-na-na-nah, na.
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
deez nuts were ringing.
The night they drove old ‘Bama down,
all the people were singing, they went:
You lost to Vanderbilt,
na-na-na-na, na-na-na-nah, na.