Cincinnati absolutely deserved its College Football Playoff spot, despite 21-point loss to Alabama

With a perfect, 13-0 record and a conference championship going into the College Football Playoff, Cincinnati absolutely deserved to be one of the final four title contenders. There’s no doubt about that.

And the No. 4 Bearcats’ first loss of the season — a 27-6 defeat by No. 1 Alabama in Friday’s Cotton Bowl Classic — doesn’t negate their worthiness, especially when you remember the cast of characters and resumes of the other once-playoff hopefuls in a particularly weird college football season.

Regardless of what a team’s schedule looks like, winning 13 consecutive games is undeniably impressive, and the Bearcats’ best victory of the year was against now-No. 5 Notre Dame, the first team on the outside looking in at the playoff. And still, without some help from other conferences around the FBS, Cincinnati might not have made the playoff and become the first Group of Five team to do so.

But it did, and losing to a Nick Saban team with the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and a bunch of future NFLers shouldn’t evoke arguments against Cincinnati being one of the top-4 teams at the end of the regular season.

And to be clear, the Bearcats fared quite a bit better than several other teams that suffered dominating playoff defeats. They’re a talented group that didn’t wither away against the nation’s top-ranked team.

At least they scored points on Alabama, unlike Michigan State against the Crimson Tide in the 2015-16 playoff or Ohio State against Clemson in the 2016-17 season. At least they didn’t lose by 35 or more points, like Oklahoma did to LSU (63-28) in the 2019-20 semifinal, or like Florida State did against Oregon (59-20) in the inaugural 2014-15 playoff.

In fact, the Bearcats’ defense stayed tough enough to ensure Alabama scored fewer first-half points in this matchup (17) than it did against Georgia (24) in the SEC championship game when everyone previously thought the Bulldogs were clearly the top squad.

By the beginning of the Cotton Bowl’s fourth quarter, Cincinnati was within 11, and until Alabama scored a touchdown with about 14 minutes left, there was still an outside chance for a big-time upset.

Bearcats quarterback Desmond Ridder completed 17 of 32 passes for 144 yards, but he couldn’t escape the Crimson Tide’s pass rush and was sacked six times.

And although Cincinnati didn’t capitalize where it needed to and didn’t play the perfect game usually required to take down the Crimson Tide — and the penalties certainly didn’t help — it clearly put up a memorable, entertaining and competitive fight compared with past playoff matchups.

While they had moments of brilliance on both sides of the ball, they just couldn’t stifle Crimson Tide quarterback Bryce Young enough — despite safety Bryan Cook handing Young just his fifth interception of the season — and they couldn’t slow down running back Brian Robinson Jr., who finished with a season-high 204 rushing yards, averaging 7.8 yards per carry.

Cincinnati lost in a similar manner that Notre Dame, Ohio State, Baylor or really any other team likely would have against the No. 1 seed, had one of them been No. 4 in the playoff instead. It lost to the Crimson Tide in suffocating fashion like so many other worthy playoff opponents have before against the college football juggernaut.

Surely few are surprised Alabama came out on top — 68 percent of bettors had the Crimson Tide covering at -13.5 and 86 percent backed them straight up, per Tipico Sportsbook — which would also likely have been the case for any other opponent.

So again, the 21-point loss to a perennial powerhouse and the defending national champs doesn’t invalidate the fact that the Bearcats earned their playoff spot. If you think it does, hopefully you also think that about all the other previous playoff teams on the wrong end of blowout losses. Hopefully, you think that for reasons other than Cincinnati simply being a G5 team, rather than a Power 5 one.

And hopefully, the Bearcats’ playoff opportunity keeps the door open — rather than shutting it indefinitely — for future talented Group of Five teams with national championship aspirations.