Nick Saban on teams being punished for CFP after losing conference championships: 'That doesn’t sound exactly right'

All 14 weeks of the college football regular season have come and gone. Now, we await Championship Saturday.

There are some monstrous conference title games scheduled for this weekend that boast massive College Football Playoff implications, including No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 Indiana (Big Ten Championship), No. 4 Georgia vs. No. 10 Alabama (SEC Championship), No. 4 Texas Tech vs. No. 11 BYU (Big 12 Championship), and No. 18 Virginia vs. Duke (ACC Championship).

Along with being strong games, all of these matchups are different for important reasons. The SEC/Big Ten title games shouldn’t drop any team out with a loss, but a higher seed could come to fruition with a win. For BYU, a win would propel the Cougars to the Playoff while also knocking out a bubble team, as Texas Tech would likely remain in the field.

As for the ACC title game, a win for Virginia would send the Cavaliers to the Playoff for the first time in program history. A win for Duke, however, would likely propel two G5 programs to the No. 11 and No. 12 seeds, as any combination of either two of Tulane/North Texas/James Madison (if it wins the Sun Belt title) would likely be ranked ahead of the Blue Devils.

Nick Saban doesn’t think teams should be punished for losing conference championship games

Ahead of the potential chaos that could ensue on Saturday, College Football Hall of Famer Nick Saban joined ‘The Pat McAfee Show.’ There, he discussed conference championship games.

“I think there’s so much emphasis on the Playoff now that bowl games have become a lot more insignificant,” Saban said. “They used to be really significant. I think these (Conference) Championship games, because of the unfair ramifications that they can have… you’ve got some teams sitting at home not playing in a game that may benefit from a team losing that is playing in a game.

“That doesn’t sound exactly right, but it could happen and will happen probably because we’ll probably reshuffle the deck a bit after these championship games. I do think that it has lost its luster, but let me just say this about (Alabama vs. Georgia). Winning the SEC is a really significant accomplishment. It always was to me and it always was to our team. I don’t think that part of it, for these two teams, has changed at all.”

The main conversation has revolved around whether or not Alabama would miss the College Football Playoff with a loss to Georgia, as that would saddle the Tide with three losses. As Saban nailed home, however, it would be hard to punish a team for reaching a conference championship (especially in the SEC) if they were to lose.