Nick Saban's worldview about the playoff is rooted in delusion. He's mad that the system penalizes losses more than it rewards good wins, and he's ignoring that 2024 Bama could have *either* not lost to Vanderbilt *or* not gotten boat-raced by a sub-.500 Oklahoma and still would've made it
Delusion and hypocrisy are his stock and trade. No more so than his morality tirades about NIL and the transfer portal when all the schools got in on it. Alabama and LSU were paying players on his watch before the term "NIL" was coined. Alabama also tampered with kids who were enrolled elsewhere.
Well at least Bama got a bowl game to show everyone why they should have made the cut
My other problem is that you don't know how good the non con teams on your schedule will be when you schedule them. If you schedule what you think is a good opponent but they have a down year, should you be penalized or rewarded?
And teams don’t make their conference schedule. By judging teams based on SOS we’re judging them on something they have no control over and tells us nothing about how they are as a team
I think if you play 10 games (5H, 5A) vs P4 teams, you did your scheduling job. Need all P4 teams to do that.
Yep and that’s something only 3 SEC teams did last year
there seems to be a lot of actual good reasons to schedule awesome non con matchups for college basketball, it helps, it preps, it strengthens your resume, and it's much more of a whole resume based sport football just does not reward hard scheduling, IU has it right, as much as it pains me to say
like there was a time when I enjoyed the annual Purdue/Notre Dame game but now it's just something that makes the season that much more impossible
Somewhat true, not entirely. Whoever wins Ohio State/Texas today will get a sizable seeding advantage from it down the line
I don’t know if this is more correlation than causation but Texas’s long journey back towards relevance actually began making progress when they started scheduling serious out of conference opponents. That’s probably more to do with the new athletic director than quality of competition though.
that's true i think im talking more from a non elite program perspective and of course, scheduling happens far in advance, but you can just see how through game theory this is a race to the bottom of scheduling
I know these schedules are all made years in advance (except in 2020) but how awesome would a built-in "eliminator" non-conference week towards the end of the season be? They have similar kind of games in basketball.
I'd love that. I also think it'd be great to limit non-con scheduling to 2 years in advance or whatever.
Seriously. I keep saying to people that Florida is getting in with 3 losses as long as they aren’t to like Mississippi State or Kentucky. It’s not that hard.
Nick Saban’s takes on the #CollegeFootballPlayoff have been trash since *at least* 2022. I wrote this in 2022 when he was lobbying for Alabama to make the then-4-team playoff when he was still the coach at Alabama. bsky.app/profile/airs...
Isn’t this the same guy who would replay losses in the weight room?
I've been of the belief if Bama best Vandy but lost to Georgia they would have been in the plauoff last yr over SMU. Thus creating the new analytic, Good Loss.
As a head coach Saban went undefeated one (1) more season than Ed Orgeron
He's used to having his losses ignored and still being rewarded *stares in LSU fan still mad about 2011*
The 12-team playoff doesn't penalize losses, for an SEC team, unless you literally have three of them. And maybe not even then some years. Hatchet-man take by the GOAT, I fear
It wouldn't even really penalize you for three losses...but those losses can't be to Kentucky.
He seems to forget that 2023 Alabama wasn't penalized for its loss.
Me when I heard him say that .
And even with those three loses, they probably would've made it if Clemson hadn't turned bid thief.
I was starting to think he was integrating well into the show with the reps but everytime they have these discussions his brain shortcircuits and he comes a shill. SCar and maybe even Ole Miss had just a good case as Bama
The guy who got two bites of the apple at LSU is one to talk!
Been thinking about this during Bama’s display rn Plenty of season left (and they can still come back!) but the whining from Bama/SEC people all offseason looks even sillier watching this