As of Friday night, the Rose Bowl was set for its quarterfinal in the College Football Playoff, as No. 9 Alabama will play No. 1 Indiana in Pasadena. Now, with ten days still between now and New Year’s Day, Paul Finebaum has looked ahead to the matchup between the Crimson Tide and the Hoosiers, and is already feeling well about ‘Bama.
Finebaum made that initial preview this morning while on ‘McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning’. It’s still early as far as breaking down the matchup, but he thinks Alabama could project to have some advantages, especially with a game already played by them in this playoff, against Indiana.
“At this moment, I feel pretty good (about Alabama),” said Finebaum. “I want to think a lot more about it, but, I mean, I think, you know, from a pure matchup standpoint, it’s not great because of how strong and disciplined Indiana is defensively. But I think there’s a lot of pressure on Indiana in this game.”
“I think it would be fascinating to watch how Alabama uses the experience of going on the road and winning that, and what they take into a game where Indiana has been sitting there. And, I know this year is not a direct comparison to last year with the four bye teams because the circumstances are dramatically different. But, I think Indiana could be a little bit vulnerable, just sitting around doing nothing right now watching football while Alabama, you know, has a lot of momentum going,” Finebaum said.
Again, from Xs and Os standpoint, there’s more to look into as far as Indiana vs. Alabama. But, just based on the rest vs. rust argument, the Tide definitely could benefit, and certainly so based on what they seemingly figured out to an extent in their playoff game, from having taken the field already, while the Hoosiers will not have played since winning the Big Ten Championship, being almost a four-week or one-month gap between postseason games, in Indianapolis.
It’s not like-for-like, but think just a playoff ago in the Rose Bowl in 2024. Oregon, also the undefeated champion out of the Big Ten who as well was also the No. 1 overall seed, lost to Ohio State, the No. 8 seed and the eventual national champions in the CFP, last year in Pasadena. Again, by no means a direct comparison with two separate teams a postseason later, and with just one expanded playoff as the sample size when talking about the effect of that time off for the top-four teams, but a point noted nonetheless by Finebaum.
Indiana vs. Alabama will be further discussed and analyzed over the next week-plus going into the Rose Bowl. Still, at least early on, Finebaum can see a scenario where the Tide could roll on New Year’s Day.