There was an article in Outkick about how Oklahoma’s loss to Navy was another huge blow to all the ESPN members who were crying over Bama and other SEC teams being left out of the playoffs. From the article linked below:

SEC fans went crazy in the first round when Indiana and SMU lost their matchups in non-competitive games. Then it went confusingly quiet as Tennessee suffered its biggest loss of the first round at Ohio State. However, there is still a dedicated group of SEC fans and ESPN/SEC commentators who believe Alabama should have been included in the playoffs. Even after a season with three defeats.

That group suffered another blow to SEC supremacy on Friday afternoon thanks to the Oklahoma Sooners.

Oklahoma finished the regular season 6-6, despite a dominant 24-3 win over the same Alabama team that the SEC/ESPN collective opinion believed should have been in the expanded playoffs. Their postseason reward was a matchup with Navy in the Armed Forces Bowl. And then, after taking a 14-0 lead, the Sooners gave up 21 straight points and lost 21-20 after a failed two-point conversion.

Ouch.

The main argument from Kirk Herbstreit and the SEC collective is that Alabama’s losses were better because they were in the SEC. And of course, the mediocre teams in the SEC are actually great compared to the mediocre teams in other conferences.

But Oklahoma is now a 6-7 team, and Alabama scored a total of three points against the Sooners, a paltry 4.1 yards per play. This is the team the entire conference has lost track of?

Yes, Alabama has great opportunities thanks to its elite talent on both ends. But his actual performance on the field, not in hypothetical situations, did not warrant inclusion in the playoffs. It’s one thing if all of Alabama’s losses were against teams at the top of the sport. That didn’t happen. Vanderbilt and Oklahoma were not good teams in 2024.

Had Alabama played to its potential in the games that took place, there would have been no debate. But the flood didn’t. You lost. On bad teams. At some point they have to let go of their pretensions and beat bad teams if they want to go 9-3 up and be rewarded. Maybe next year.

The problem with trying to get your big-name teams into the playoffs because they’re “better” rather than because they’re the most deserving is that they didn’t prove it on the field when it really mattered. We’ll never know if people suspect that Bama and others would have competed better than SMU and Indiana, so it’s pointless to even speculate. What we do know is that the more Herbie complains about the SEC, the more he gets more and more involved. That SEC loss to Ohio-born Navy QB Horvath made things even sweeter after OSU contained UT. We look forward to this trend continuing in the new year! A B1G team (preferably OSU, of course) against Notre Dame in the finals sounds very good right now, and that would mean all-North teams in the finals two years in a row. Go Money!

https://www.outkick.com/sports/sec-takes-another-hit-oklahoma-loss-navy