The Alabama Crimson Tide unfairly made the College Football Playoff's 12-team field over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Sunday, and many have their theories on what caused the CFP selection committee to make that gaffe.
Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy believes the fix was in the moment the committee started hyping up the Auburn Tigers, in his words, like the 1985 Chicago Bears.
"This is when you knew ESPN and the SEC had it rigged for Bama no matter what. When they made it sound like Bama escaping Auburn who was so bad this year that they fired their coach was like beating the 85 Bears. They looked really good in the 1st half is such a hilarious line," Portnoy tweeted.
Arkansas Razorbacks AD Hunter Yurachek, the CFP committee's chair, awkwardly explained why they bumped Alabama over Notre Dame in a now-infamous diatribe Portnoy is referencing, following the Iron Bowl.
"The debate between Alabama and Notre Dame over the past three weeks has been one of the strongest debates we've had in the room for the past two years that I've been a member of the committee. I think this week, as we looked at those two teams and how closely they have been over the past three weeks, Notre Dame went on the road, had a strong win at Stanford, but Alabama went on the road and a rivalry game looked really good, especially in the first half, getting up 17 to nothing, ran the ball well. Auburn came back at them. 
They had a great gutsy call on fourth-and-2, late in the third quarter to get a touchdown and then got the turnover late in that game. And I think that was enough to change the minds of a couple of committee members to push Alabama up ahead of Notre Dame in this week's rankings," Yurachek said.
Alabama making CFP has a silver lining for Auburn
Winning the Iron Bowl outweighed getting destroyed in the SEC Championship 28-7 by the Georgia Bulldogs. Ipso facto, Auburn is an important victory on any team's resume, including the four teams in the CFP field that beat them this season: Alabama, the Georgia Bulldogs, the TAMU Aggies, and the Oklahoma Sooners.
The Tigers should start giving fans more than silver linings on CFP's Selection Sunday. Perhaps maybe a berth one of these years, with new head coach Alex Golesh at the helm on the Plains.
For now, that's what they'll have to settle for after the Tide received a spot they didn't earn.