The advent of the 12-team College Football Playoff has kept more teams alive for the national championship nine weeks into the season than ever before, ostensibly. In actuality, there are still probably only a small handful of teams that could conceivably run the gauntlet through the playoff and come out the other side with a trophy.
To ESPN’s Bill Connelly, there are only four. And the Alabama Crimson Tide are one of them.
In Connelly’s weekly column coming out of Week 9, he named the four teams that, in his evaluation and statistical analysis, are “playing like potential national champions.