After going two years without a national title while Georgia finally roused itself from a decades long slumber to launch what has all the appearances of being the next great dynasty in college football, the Alabama Crimson Tide have fallen on hard times and Head Coach Nick Saban, the most accomplished coach in the history of college football, isn’t taking it well.
In fact, rather than accepting the new reality of the college football landscape, Saban has developed quite the habit of excusing away his program’s shortcomings (relatively speaking, of course) in recent years. You would think that the architect of the sport’s greatest dynasty would have too much pride and self-respect to resort to the type of feeble antics typically reserved for coaches and fans of teams that never actually win anything, but think again.
Saban isn’t new to the art of excuses. He was finding ingenious ways to deflect blame for losses as early as 2009 when his mighty Alabama squad lost to Utah by two touchdowns in the Sugar Bowl. In recent years, however, the Alabama head coach has turned it up a notch.
Following the loss to Georgia in the 2022 CFP National Championship Game, Saban found it necessary to remind the college football world that 2021 was a “rebuilding year” for the Tide despite the fact that their roster included 2021Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young and another player in Will Anderson who finished in the top 5 of the Heisman voting and won the Bronco Nagurski Award annually awarded to the nation’s top defensive player.
Then during the 2022 offseason, after watching Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M leverage NIL to put together the highest-rated recruiting class in the history of college football recruiting, unseating Alabama in the process, Saban set off a firestorm of controversy when he appeared on a local radio show and claimed that “A&M bought every player on their team, made a deal for name, image and likeness,” while Alabama “didn’t buy one player.” The message was clear: Texas A&M could never legitimately best Alabama in recruiting. The Aggies could only do so through nefarious, morally dubious means.
But just when you thought that maybe Saban would learn to keep such thoughts to himself, he resorted to his bag of tricks once again during an interview with Joel Klatt of Fox Sports over the weekend when he railed like the old man that he is against the College Football Playoff selection process that left Alabama on the outside looking in at the 2022 CFB playoff.
You know the story. Alabama finished the 2022 regular season 10-2, losing both games on the road against 10-win teams on the last play of the game. As narrow as the margins were, those two losses were enough to keep the Crimson Tide out of the College Football Playoff. In a clear sign that he still isn’t over the perceived snub, during the interview with Klatt, Saban steered a conversation about parity in college football into a rant about Alabama being left holding the bag at No.5 in the final CFP rankings. Because of course he did.
“So but the problem with the way the whole system is, there’s no accounting for that, right,” Saban said of parity. “So, all we do is take the teams that win the most games at the end of the year, put them in the playoffs. But do you really get the best teams?”
So, he’s just crying loser tears again, right? Well, yeah, he is, but he is also not necessarily wrong. In fact, as much as I would like to take the opportunity to bash Saban for making yet another excuse for Alabama falling short of expectations like every other college football observer around the country appears to be so eager to do, I actually could not agree with him more. Trust me, as a diehard Georgia fan, it pains me just as much to type those words as it does you to read them. I am no Saban apologist, but I am also a big boy who is capable of objective thought, and objectively, the guy has a point.
Georgia, Ohio State, and Michigan are one thing. I believe all three of those teams were better teams than Alabama was last season. But, TCU?
I realize the popular perception of last year’s playoff discussion is that TCU “earned” its way in over Alabama. But did it really? Or did it just have the good fortune of playing a weaker schedule that Alabama would have run roughshod over?
I mean, come on. Do we really think TCU was a BETTER football team than Alabama was last year? If you do, you might want to give up watching college football because you simply do not understand what you are watching.
According to essentially every available metric, Alabama was not just better than TCU, they were significantly better. The Tide outgained their opponents by 1,300 more yards than the Horned Frogs outgained the opponents on their schedule (2,070 vs. 702). Alabama also outscored its opponents by 23 points per game, while TCU only managed to outscore its opponents by 9.8 points per game. And Alabama did all of that while playing the most difficult regular season schedule in the country.
The only edge that TCU had on Saban’s Alabama squad was their respective records. TCU went into the final CFP rankings reveal with a 12-1 record with that one loss coming to Kansas State – a team they had already beaten in the regular season – in the Big XII Championship game, while Alabama finished the regular season 10-2. I know for most college football fans and prognosticators a team’s record is the ultimate trump card, but aren’t we capable of more nuanced thought than that?
Many who subscribe to that line of thinking like to throw out cool catchphrases like “games have consequences” or “we play the games for a reason” to support their shallow thought process, but the reality they do not want discuss is that not all schedules are created equally. Sure TCU went 12-0 in the regular season while Alabama suffered two heartbreaking road losses on the final play of the game to Tennessee and LSU, but how would TCU have fared in those same games if they were forced to play Alabama’s schedule, which, oh by the way, was the most difficult schedule in the country according to strength of schedule metrics. Based on their vastly inferior numbers, it is highly likely TCU would have also dropped those games and probably by wider margins than Alabama did.
Conversely, would Alabama have gone undefeated with TCU’s schedule? Of course they would have. In fact, Alabama would not only have gone undefeated in the regular season, they would have also defeated Kansas State in the Big XII Championship Game, a feat TCU was unable to accomplish. I can say that with authority because Alabama played Kansas State at a neutral site – just like TCU did – in the Sugar Bowl and pounded the Wildcats to the tune of 45-20.
The debate between TCU and Alabama ultimately can be distilled down to the question of BEST team vs. MOST DESERVING team. While fans and media members all have their own opinions on how the CFP Selection Committee should go about selecting the four playoff teams, the Selection Committee’s protocol is clear in its directive that the committee select the four BEST teams.
“For purposes of any four-team playoff, the process will inevitably need to select the four best teams from among several with legitimate claims to participate.”
TCU, by virtue of its undefeated regular season in a Power 5 conference was arguably more deserving of a playoff berth than Alabama, but, make no mistake about it, Alabama was the better team and, therefore, should have been selected over TCU.
If you put on your thinking cap and set aside your bias and dislike for Nick Saban, you have to admit, the man kind of has a point. It was his next comments, however, that lost a lot of people.
“When they told me that we would be favored against three out of the four teams that got in the playoff, I’m like, why aren’t we in the playoffs?”
Look, I know he went a little overboard when he started talking about imaginary point spreads and certainly gave his haters plenty of ammunition to light up Twitter timelines with, but let’s also not be dense here. By referencing hypothetical point spreads Saban was simply trying to point out that oddsmakers who make billions gauging the relative strength of teams across the country also shared his opinion that the Crimson Tide were better than several of the teams that were ultimately selected for the 2022 playoff. I know people are eager to kick the man while he is down, but is that really all that outlandish?
Yet, while the point spread line may have detracted from his core message, Saban managed to get back on point and finish the thought congently.
“Does that mean they have a better team,” Saban said. “Or does it mean that those people don’t know what they’re talking about? I really don’t know that. But I’m not being critical of anybody. But if you’re going to have parity, you have to have a better way of figuring out who has the best teams, not just because you lose two games on the last play of the game.”
Once again, the man makes a hell of a point.
I know if you have made it to this point without closing out the tab in disgust you are probably firmly convinced that I am a closet Alabama fan. I assure you, I am not. I can guarantee you that Nick Saban and Alabama have taken more years off of my life than they have yours. Has your alma mater ever lost a national championship game to Alabama in overtime when you have them behind the chains at 2nd and 26 before Tua Tagovailoa cuts your throat only to have a horde of Alabama fans point and laugh at you in a deranged delirium while you bleed out on the floor of Mercedes Benz Stadium? Yeah, didn’t think so. Screw those guys.
The truth is on top of being a dyed in the wool Georgia fan, I love college football and I want it to be the best version of itself. For us to see the best version of college football and avoid record-setting blowouts in national championship games, we should heed Nick Saban’s words and take a long hard look at how we go about selecting the College Football Playoff participants moving forward.
The man has a point.