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Nick Saban takes shot at ESPN while calling out complaints over College Football Playoff size

Matt Connollyby: Matt Connolly11/22/24MattConnollyOn3
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Nick Saban in Austin, Texas. (© Sara Diggins/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

The College Football Playoff is expanding from four teams to 12 teams this season, but there is still plenty of drama about the bubble. Instead of arguing over who should get the final spot in a four-team playoff, now the conversation is about which teams should be included in the top 12.

Former Alabama coach and current ESPN college football analyst Nick Saban took a shot at his own network on Friday when discussing complaints about the new-look College Football Playoff.

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“Let’s look at the NCAA basketball tournament. They put 68 teams in and they have a two-hour show on ESPN about who didn’t get in,” Nick Saban said Friday on The Pat McAfee Show. “So it doesn’t matter whether it’s 12 teams, 16 teams. There’s always going to be a debate about who didn’t get in.”

While there are of course some who are unhappy about teams that may be getting left out of the playoff, overall Nick Saban is a fan of the playoff expansion.

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Yes, there are going to be bubble teams that are still left out. But we will no longer see scenarios where a team with one of the best resumes in the country misses out on a College Football Playoff spot. Saban used last year’s undefeated Florida State team as an example.

“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.”