Alabama football and its fans felt slighted after not making the College Football Playoff as a 9-3 SEC team, despite ugly losses to Oklahoma and Vanderbilt during the season. They were MAD mad about the perceived Alabama snub, and nonsensical talk of the Crimson Tide deserving a playoff spot continued through the first-round games.

We heard it for more than twostraight weeks, from the day that the College Football Playoff field was set, through the first round of games, and all through this past week. Alabama should have been in the playoff instead of SMU.

Alabama went into the ReliaQuest Bowl as 16.5-point favorites over Michigan on Tuesday. But three early turnovers proved to be too big for the Crimson Tide as t