Here is an alleged quote many people will cite as Alabama’s College Football Playoff case gets debated until kingdom come. Bama, of course, does not have a conference title in 2017, but Ohio State does.
No, Nick Saban didn’t contradict himself on whether only conference champs can make the Playoff. Look at the actual quote
A popular meme is fake news.
There’s one problem though:
Saban didn’t say those words, and he didn’t even contradict himself, when you look at the actual 2016 statement in context.
When you do, Saban’s describing the situation his 2017 team has now found itself in. Watch the actual statement:
The question Saban was asked about whether being a conference champ should trump anything else on a Playoff resume. In fact, his 2016 quote made a good case for 2016 Ohio State.
His answer in full:
I think I can answer the question better if you gave me a specific scenario. I think that being a conference champ is certainly a significant accomplishment for any team or any program. But I also think that sometimes there are circumstances where a team can play really, really well for an entire season.
Are we basing the Playoff on the whole body of work that a team does throughout the year in terms of the teams they beat and the quality opponents they played against, or is it just about one game?
So, when you talk about conference championships, if you play a conference championship, some leagues don’t even have conference championships. So it’s not sort of a fair and equitable way if you’re gonna base that particular group on didn’t play a conference championship. So you’re doing the whole body of work; then it seems a little more reasonable to look at everyone else’s entire body of work when you decide who the best teams are.
Hey, we won a national championship here and didn’t win the SEC. I think in that particular year, LSU and Alabama had the two best teams. So we had to play in the regular season, so we played 9-6. There are 42 guys — somebody wrote an article — that played in the NFL that played on that field that day. So they were two really, really good teams. Well, both teams in the same divisions couldn’t play in the conference championship, so we end up going to the championship game. So, was that the right thing or the wrong thing? I’m sure everybody could debate that. I believe that those were the two best teams.
So it depends on what the goal is.
It is certainly true that Saban is lobbying for Bama’s interest against Ohio State now ...
... but he set up this scenario with his answer last season.
He brought up the main gripe that many people have about the Playoff committee: confusion as to what exactly a one-size-fits-all criteria for a Playoff entrant actually looks like.
It is funny, though, that Saban’s making his team’s case in the media after spending the season referring to media influence as “rat poison.”
Saban railed against media expectations, calling it rat poison back in September. But now, Saban is politicking for his team interests through the media just like every other coach whose Playoff resume isn’t a slam dunk.
Either way, his old quote isn’t hypocritical. It describes the rat trap that the Playoff committee faces right now.
See More:
