After the first round of the College Football Playoff, we heard a lot of squawking about a couple teams getting blown out and thus not worthy of being part of the competition.

Cool, let’s play the game that way.

Final score from Jan. 1: Indiana 38, Alabama 3 at the Rose Bowl.

Guess what Alabama? That result shows you didn’t belong in the field. That was a minor-league performance and a major beat down.

Former Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban can tell us a bit about the minor leagues.

That was his way of taking shots at Tulane and James Madison, two programs outside of the major conferences who made the field before losing their first games.

“Would we allow the winner of the Triple-A baseball league — the International League, I don’t even know the name of it — would you let them in the World Series? That’s the equivalent of what we do when JMU gets in the Playoff, and Notre Dame doesn’t,” Saban said on the Pat McAfee Show.

First of all, Saban could use a fact-checker because Notre Dame didn’t miss the playoffs because of James Madison or Tulane.

Those two non-elite programs made the field because an 8-5 Duke team was the Atlantic Coast Conference champion and the CFP rules – put together by big wigs like Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey – cites that the five highest-ranked conference champions automatically qualify regardless of their ranking.

So apparently, the decision makers of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC never envisioned one of their own conference champs would be ranked so low. Pretty bad foresight from the folks making the rules.

Last year, byes were awarded to the top-four ranked conference champions and Boise State of the Mountain West – one of the outsider leagues – earned a bye. So the decision makers changed the rule to make sure that never happens again.

If you have to change the qualifications after every season, guess what: You’re not very good at making rules.

As for Notre Dame, it was passed over as an at-large team. Miami received one of the final berths. The No. 10 Hurricanes have shown that was a superb decision by the selection committee as they are one of the four teams left.

The second-to-last team to get in was Alabama – that’s where the problem lies if you are disappointed the Fighting Irish aren’t involved.

The Crimson Tide got smoked 28-7 by Georgia in the SEC championship game, making themselves a three-loss team. That was the time to punt Alabama’s season into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Crimson Tide got into the field and beat Oklahoma in the first round. Nice job. Let’s get Alabama some participation trophies.

But great that they won because we got to see Indiana annihilate the Crimson Tide in Pasadena, showing all of us that Alabama isn’t even Williamsport-worthy this season.

Should Notre Dame have made the field? Probably. But the selection committee was deciding between the Fighting Irish and Miami for the last spot.

The Hurricanes won the head-to-head meeting so that decision was really easy. Good-bye Notre Dame.

But if Miami had been the No. 9 seed and the final decision was between Notre Dame and Alabama, you could have gone either way on that choice.

The Crimson Tide needed a late touchdown to beat Auburn (1-7 in SEC play) before getting steamrolled by Georgia in the SEC title game.

Sorry, the 56-0 win over Eastern Illinois and the 73-0 rout over UL Monroe mean nothing to anyone.

Wait, coach Saban, did someone say UL Monroe?

That’s a program in a non-power conference that has had exactly one winning campaign in the past 45 seasons. That’s the type of program that might qualify as “Triple-A,” right?

It would be highly embarrassing to ever lose to a team like that, right?

Please don’t tell Saban it was him coaching the Crimson Tide when they lost 21-14 to visiting UL Monroe on Nov. 17, 2007.

OK, so getting blown out by Indiana wasn’t Alabama’s low point.