On Tuesday evening, the College Football Playoff Committee revealed its newest rankings heading into the final week of the regular season. There weren’t many surprises at the top, with Oregon holding serve at number one, followed by Ohio State at number two, but the lower half of the top 15 saw some chaos, as both Alabama and Ole Miss fell significantly after losses this week.
One person who has been the beneficiary of the committee’s inconsistency over the years is former Alabama head coach Nick Saban, who saw his team sneak into the playoff last year over an undefeated Florida State team and then promptly lose once they got there.
Recently, Saban–now an analyst at ESPN–took to the Pat McAfee Show to break down why this isn’t a perfect system.
“The subjective part of this that you can never fix is the conferences are not equal. They’re not equal in depth of good teams, nor are they equal in the quality of the best teams,” said Saban. “So, to give you an example, let’s just take Ole Miss so I stay away from this whole Alabama thing. So if Ole Miss played in the Big 12, what would their record be? That’s the kind of subjective issues that we have in college football that are never going to change unless we take the best 40 teams in college football and put them in a league, very similar to the 32 teams that are in the NFL, and then the competition level is probably going to be better more equal.”
Indeed, the college football world has long had an issue with disparities in talent between the conferences, despite a recent realignment that saw major shifts in all of the Power 5 conferences.
With three losses, both Alabama and Ole Miss would figure to be more than likely eliminated from playoff contention, although there is hope for them if some more chaos unfolds this coming weekend and into Championship Saturday.
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Elsewhere in the rankings, the Georgia Bulldogs came in at number seven, just behind the Miami Hurricanes, who still have just one loss. Overall, if Tuesday evening’s rankings revealed anything, it’s that there’s still a whole lot left to be decided over the coming weeks before the playoffs get underway.
Nick Saban and the rest of his College Gameday friends will be in College Station this weekend for Texas A&M vs Texas.