Why Alabama vs. Ohio State Must Happen as Scheduled

High-profile games in the first month of the college football season are getting more and more scarce.

As the College Football Playoff has expanded, teams have felt less inclined to take on those games, instead often scheduling cupcakes in an effort to stack up wins before conference play begins.

And yet, Alabama and Ohio State -- arguably the two most successful programs of the 21st century -- were supposed to be preserving the good old days with a home-and-home series scheduled to begin in September of 2027.

That’s now unlikely to happen, with ESPN talking head Paul Finebaum saying in a radio interview this week that Alabama is expected to cancel that series.

That feels like a reaction to Texas opening the 2025 season at Ohio State, losing that game 14-7 and subsequently being left out of the CFP with a 9-3 record.

The only problem with that line of thinking? One can make a strong argument that loss isn’t what kept the deeply flawed Longhorns out of the playoff.

No matter how much Texas coach Steve Sarkisian campaigned for his team, they were never really in the final CFP conversation, even after a season-ending 27-17 win over previously unbeaten and third-ranked rival Texas A&M.

The Longhorns were three spots out of the playoff field because they had two other defeats, a 29-21 loss to a Florida team which won four games and an uncompetitive 35-10 loss at Georgia.

Perhaps even more crucially, Texas needed overtime to defeat Kentucky and Mississippi State, who won a combined three Southeastern Conference games.

The preseason No. 1 team, Texas didn’t really find itself and come close to that hype until after too much damage had been done to its resume.

It may be true that Texas would have made the playoff had it not opened the season at Ohio State -- which will make a return trip to Austin this September.

However, that’s only half the argument. Had Texas won that game, it likely would have been afforded a mulligan for the remainder of the season.

Had the Longhorns taken three SEC losses against ranked opponents, that Ohio State road win, which would have probably been the best win any team had this regular season, may have been enough to keep Texas in the CFP conversation.

Had Texas won that game and then lost just two games the rest of the way, it likely would have been seeded remarkably well in the CFP, possibly on the fringe of the top four.

To only see the downside of those “helmet” nonconference games between the biggest brands in college football is to ignore the upside.

And it would also be bad for the sport if they largely or even entirely go away.

If the first three or four weeks of the season devolve exclusively into ranked teams obliterating overmatched opponents who shouldn’t really be on the same field, it would be a real shame.

We only get such precious little college football relative to basically every other sport. A month of it shouldn’t be wasted like that.