ESPN’s David Hale took a blunt, tidy swing at the preseason hype machine, and Alabama came out of it looking far less imposing than Crimson Tide fans would want.
Hale’s latest preseason exercise sorted all 138 FBS teams into 20 tiers instead of running a straight No. 1-through-No. 138 list. He even poked fun at the whole enterprise, calling the rankings “educated guesses ... guaranteed to be accurate for at least as long as nobody knows any better.”
That kind of self-aware, no-big-deal style is part of what makes his work stand out. Hale keeps it short, sharp, and a little wry, which is a welcome change in a media space that often leans hard into noise.
But the real news for Alabama is where it landed. Not in Tier 1, where Hale placed Indiana, Miami, Notre Dame, and Ohio State. Not in Tier 2, either, which he labeled “Trust issues” and filled with Georgia, Oregon, and Texas.
Even Tier 3 - “Maybe this is their year” - went to BYU, LSU, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and USC. Alabama missed that group too.
Instead, the Crimson Tide showed up in Tier 4: “We’re still here.” That tier also included Michigan, Ole Miss, and Utah.
Taken together, Hale’s placement suggests he sees Alabama as the SEC’s sixth-best or seventh-best team based on the teams he slotted into his top four tiers.
The ranking lines up with Bill Connelly’s recent take that Alabama has a long list of “ifs” to clear before it can truly be treated like a national championship contender.
Hale didn’t soften the blow. He wrote, “ ... there's no sugarcoating that this is, at best, a B+ version of the program that owned college football for the better part of the 21st century. It's nowhere near the Mike Shula dark ages, but it's not all that close to the 2020 juggernaut either.”
He followed that with an even cleaner verdict: “For most programs, this wouldn't be an insult, but the hard truth? Alabama is good.
Not great. Not elite.
Not generational. Good.”
That may be the right read. Or, if you’re looking at it through crimson-tinted glasses, maybe Alabama has more than “Good” in it. Either way, Hale’s point is clear: “We’re still here” is a long way from where Alabama usually expects to live.
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