Alabama is ranked highly because they play and do well in the SEC, and have had prior success.  Similarly, everyone that is the SEC gets ranked higher for being in the same conference as Alabama and Georgia, and for playing them sometimes closely, sometimes not - but it's never a bad loss to lose to Alabama or Georgia.

Similarly, recruits get ranked higher because they commit to Alabama, but when they commit elsewhere, they sometimes lose a star.  Alabama in turn gets ranked in the pre-season in part because they have a decent prior year and in part because of a strong recruiting class, which is always hovering around the top 5 if not number 1 overall.

At this point, the only surprise would be if some model eventually downplays Alabama's results and their recruits.  That would just mean to me that at some point some party decided that all teams were going to be rated more heavily on W/L and comparative strength of schedule given to the conferences based on non-conf games.