The Alabama Crimson Tide had a rough finish to a once promising 2024 college football season.
Alabama suffered a 19-13 loss in the ReliaQuest Bowl on New Year’s Eve in Tampa to a Michigan Wolverines program that fielded hardly even a shell of the team that defeated the Tide in the Rose Bowl while en route to the national championship a year earlier.
The Crimson Tide capped a 9-4 season under first-year coach Kalen DeBoer that had a few highs — wins over Georgia, LSU and Auburn — but far too many lows.
Recapping the 2024-25 bowl game slate for USA TODAY Sports on Monday, college football analyst Paul Myerberg listed Alabama as one of the year’s biggest losers in bowl season.
Myerberg said:
“They won’t throw a parade for this Alabama team — but maybe they should, to celebrate the fact that this miserable season is finally over. The year ended with that loss to Michigan, the latest letdown for a team that lost to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma during the regular season but was somehow still plugged as a worthy playoff participant. Yeah, right. Losing to the Wolverines ushers in the program’s most anxiety ridden offseason in over a generation, as the spotlight turns fully onto coach Kalen DeBoer and his efforts to bring the Tide back into the national mix.”
The SEC didn’t fare much better than Alabama as a whole, with none of the traditional conference members still in the hunt for the national championship following Georgia’s 23-10 loss to Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl last week.
Myerberg said of the SEC:
“The league is 8-6 overall in the postseason, joining the Big Ten as the only Power Four leagues with a winning record in bowl play. The SEC can tout strong bowl wins by Florida, Arkansas (Texas Tech in the Liberty Bowl), LSU (Baylor in the Texas Bowl) and Mississippi (Duke in the Gator Bowl), not to mention two playoff wins by Texas. But the head-to-head results against the Big Ten are embarrassing: Missouri beat Iowa, but South Carolina lost to Illinois, then Alabama lost to Michigan, Texas A&M lost to Southern California and Ohio State creamed Tennessee.”
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