The Alabama Crimson Tide’s exclusion from the 12-team College Football Playoff in favor of the SMU Mustangs has drawn sharp criticism from legendary coach Nick Saban.
Saban expressed concerns over the selection process, particularly how strength of schedule is weighed.
The seven-time national champion questioned whether athletic directors might be incentivized to schedule less challenging opponents in the future to improve playoff prospects.
“I think one of the things that I’ve mentioned throughout this football season is: If we don’t take strength of schedule into consideration, is there any benefit to scheduling really good teams in the future?” Saban asked.
Using Alabama’s upcoming schedule as an example, he noted, “Like here at Alabama we’re supposed to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Florida State in the future outside the league.
“Well those are great games for fans to see and that’s what I think we should be doing in college football is creating more good inventory for great games.
“But do you enhance people wanting to do that where, what’s the athletic director going to do? He may go cancel all those games now knowing that the SEC is tough enough.”
Unsurprisingly, Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrne echoed Saban’s line of thinking.
“Disappointed with the outcome and felt we were one of the 12 best teams in the country,” Byrne stated on X. “We had an extremely challenging schedule and recognize there were two games in particular that we did not perform as well as we should have.
“We have said that we would need to see how strength of schedule would be evaluated by the CFP. With this outcome, we will need to asses how many P4 non-conference games make sense in the future to put us in the best position to participate in the CFP. That is not good for college football.”
The Crimson Tide finished the 2024 season with a 9-3 record, the 16th-ranked strength of schedule, and a 3-1 mark against ranked teams.
SMU, meanwhile, posted a 10-2 record with the sixth-ranked SOS but went 0-2 against ranked opponents.
Saban stressed that teams ultimately have control over their playoff destiny, pointing to the need for consistency.
“I do think the best teams are in the playoff, which I think is most important,” he continued. “And no coach should have any complaint about what his circumstance is relative to getting in the playoffs or out of the playoff.
“They all controlled their own destiny and they all had opportunities and they had some flaws and bad losses that contributed to their circumstances. So this could be a learning lesson for each and every team and every individual on those teams.”
As Saban alluded to, the Tide have no one to blame but themselves.
At the end of the day, all they needed to do was beat Vanderbilt or Oklahoma, and that would have been enough to get in.
No. 11 SMU will face No. 6 Penn State in the first round of the College Football Playoff on Dec. 21 at 12pm EST.
Meanwhile, Kalen DeBoer and the Tide are left wondering what could have been?
What are your thoughts on Saban’s comments? … Where do you stand on the whole playoff debate???
