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By Cory Nightingale
Published:
Kalen DeBoer has a job to do, and it’s not to obsess over the College Football Playoff rankings.
Instead, the Alabama head coach spoke earlier this week during an interview on SEC Radio about how his focus and his team’s focus needs to be anywhere but on what happens during those Tuesday night rankings releases that get so much attention.
DeBoer knows that making the Playoff is the end game, but he also knows his team, which is currently ranked 3rd in those CFP rankings despite its 2 losses, can’t get where it needs to get if it doesn’t put the focus on the next opponent.
That next foe in Week 11 is 4-5 Vanderbilt, where Alabama will head on Saturday for a 12:45 p.m. ET clash on SEC Network. The last time Bama went to Nashville, 2 years ago, it lost as the No. 1 team in the country, and while these are different teams — especially Vanderbilt, which is 1-5 in the SEC — the last thing DeBoer needs is for his team’s focus to waver so close to the finish line.
That’s why he told SEC Radio that his team must not take its eyes off the prize, or in this off the next opponent that is one step closer to that prize.
“You know that (the Playoff rankings) doesn’t really matter because you got to keep playing. You know, if the season is over, yeah, then it really matters,” Kalen DeBoer said. “We gotta keep playing, we gotta go play some ball this week against a good Vanderbilt team, a team that people are truly underestimating if you look at the scores throughout the course of their games. … These games are tight against some really good football teams, so we gotta be ready.”
"If the season was over, yeah then it really matters."@KalenDeBoer said the matchup with Vanderbilt is the focus, not where the team landed in the recent CFP Rankings.@AlabamaFTBL | #RollTide | @PeterBurnsESPN | @ChrisDoering | #SECThisMorning pic.twitter.com/50Vl2hjm6S
DeBoer remembers what happened when the Tide stumbled in Nashville in 2024.
“We know what it’s like going there, we’ve been there once before, at least with our staff and this team and, you know, it didn’t go so well,” DeBoer said.
And that’s why DeBoer doesn’t want to talk CFP rankings quite yet. He’ll be more inclined to do that when the regular season ends and there are no more games to get ready for.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
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