Nick Saban calls out 2022 College Football Playoff snub for Alabama against TCU

Nick Saban and Alabama made the College Football Playoff in three of his final four years of coaching. The one year the Crimson Tide didn’t came in 2022 when Alabama was on the bubble but was ultimately left out.

Saban’s team ended the regular season with a 10-2 (6-2) record, but the two losses were by a total of four points. Still, that was enough to allow a 12-1 TCU team to sneak into the CFP ahead of the Crimson Tide.

The Horned Frogs got into the College Football Playoff with one loss, and while Nick Saban understands why, he still isn’t over it.

“It’s all subjective,” Nick Saban said Friday on The Pat McAfee Show. “We would’ve been 13-point favorites over TCU if we would’ve played them. And they got in the playoffs and we didn’t.”

To TCU’s credit, the Horned Frogs did beat Michigan in a College Football Playoff semifinal game. However, they were later pounded by Georgia, falling 65-7 in the national title game. Alabama didn’t play Georgia that year, but they did fare pretty well against a difficult SEC schedule.

“I’m not criticizing TCU. It wasn’t their fault,” Nick Saban said. “I mean, but that is the subjective part of it.”

Nick Saban added that the good news is that we shouldn’t see an issue like this come up with the current 12-team playoff format. If teams have one of the best resumes in the country, they will get in moving forward.

“I think the good news about this, and I’ve said this many times before, is they will get the best five or six teams in, for sure,” Nick Saban said. “There’s been times in the past, like in 2003 when we won, lots of people thought Southern Cal should’ve got in.

“There were times when we didn’t get in or we got in and Florida State didn’t get in. … So I don’t think that’s going to happen. They’ll get the best teams in. … But some of the teams that get in and some of the teams that don’t get in and how that’s all worked out is going to be an issue.”