Alabama football won’t be included in the College Football Playoff this year.
The CFP committee made the Crimson Tide the first team outside of the 12-team field, so essentially the 13th team. SMU got the final spot over the Crimson Tide after losing the ACC title game on a last second field goal.
After ESPN revealed the final CFP rankings, Nick Saban gave his thoughts on the network.
“I think one of the things 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 said. “Here at Alabama, we’re supposed to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Florida State in the future outside the league. Those are great games for fans to see. That’s what I think we should be doing in college football is creating more good inventory for great games that people are interested in. Do you enhance people wanting to do that? What’s the athletic director going to do? He may cancel all those games now knowing that the SEC is tough enough.”
Saban, an ESPN analyst who is also still on the UA payroll as an advisor, said at the same time he thinks “the best teams are in the playoff” which he thinks is most important.
“And no coach should have any complaint about what his circumstance is relative to getting in the playoff or out of the playoff because they all controlled their own destiny and they all had opportunities and they had some flaws and bad losses that contributed to their circumstances,” Saban said. “This could be a learning lesson for each and every team and every individual on those teams.”
Alabama had a much better strength of schedule than SMU: The Crimson Tide ranked 16th while the Mustangs finished 60th. Alabama also had a 3-1 record against teams still ranked this week in the CFP top 25. SMU was 0-2.
But SMU had one fewer loss, and the second loss was to Clemson by a field goal in the conference championship. Essentially, the committee didn’t punish SMU for playing an extra game. Alabama also has two bad losses to Vanderbilt
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