Nick Saban Hopes College Football Can Learn from ‘Devastating’ Notre Dame Snub

The 12-team bracket for this year’s College Football Playoff is out, and some folks aren’t happy.

Nick Saban thinks there’s still work to be done with regard to the College Football Playoff. / ESPN

The 12-team bracket for this year’s College Football Playoff was released on Sunday, with Notre Dame drawing the short straw as the odd team out while Alabama and Miami snuck into the field as the final two at-large bids.

After the conclusion of Saturday’s conference championship slate, it was clear that there were just two spots for the three teams on the bubble, each having their own cases for and against. Alabama was a three-loss team, but only because they played in a conference title game, which neither Notre Dame nor Miami did. Can you fault them for losing a game that their mere presence in proved they were among the nation’s best?

Miami beat Notre Dame head-to-head the very first week of the season. Both teams have changed a lot since then, but direct matchups have to matter to an extent right? Also, if Miami didn’t get a spot in the field, that would mean the entire ACC was not represented in the playoff, as Virginia lost the conference title game to a Duke team that already had five losses on the year and was never getting an invite.

Ultimately, Alabama and Miami got the nod, and Notre Dame was left regretting its 0–2 start to the year. On ESPN, the biggest voices in college football media debated the committee’s decision, and critiqued the structure and the criteria of the current playoff format.

“I think the fact of the matter is that all three of those teams should have gotten in, and deserved the right to play in the College Football Playoff,” former Alabama coach Nick Saban said of the field.

Saban went on to not-so-subtly suggest that the automatic bids awarded to champions of smaller conferences should be reconsidered.

“I think you’re going to have two teams in the playoff, no disrespect to the Group of Five, that are nowhere near ranked as highly as some other teams that are much better than them,” Saban said, referring to Tulane and James Madison, who made the bracket as the 11th and 12th teams in the field. “This has got to be devastating for Notre Dame’s team, not to get an opportunity to play in the playoffs. We can learn something from this that will help us come up with a little better criteria of trying to make sure we get the best 12 teams in the playoff, and also address this whole idea of conference championship games and also the tiebreakers that get you in the conference championship game in each conference has a significant impact on what happens in this whole thing.

“I don’t think there was a good answer for all this. I’m happy for the teams that got in, and I think the committee did a really good job, I just think there was one team left out that I just don’t think should have been left out. But there’s no way around it.”

Nick Saban reacts to the College Football Playoff field. 🏈🎙️ #CFP https://t.co/VaX9AI4n5m pic.twitter.com/QWVejRTnXC

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 7, 2025

Nick Saban wants the best 12 teams to make the playoffs, but is that really the goal?

Saban’s argument, while diplomatically phrased, feels like a shot at the Group of Five schools who can only play the schedule in front of them. While I think most would argue that the likes of Notre Dame, or other Power 4 schools like Texas or Vanderbilt that failed to make the bracket, would have a better shot of winning the title than Tulane or James Madison, that’s not precisely what the playoff field was built around.

When Saban says the committee needs to figure out how to “make sure we get the best 12 teams in the playoff,” it begs the question of whether or not that is the true goal of the 12-team field. Is it about bringing in the “best” teams? Or most deserving? Or some combination of the two?

Back when just two teams played for a title in the BCS era, it felt that expansion was needed to give every team that deserved a shot at the title a shot at the title. When the playoff was four teams, and there were still five power conferences, there was the awkward fact that at least one would be left out. But in today’s 12-team bracket, you have the SEC commissioner arguing that actually he should have seven teams in the field, and that just sounds ridiculous. If there’s not room for Group of Five schools to make the 12-team field, why did we expand in the first place?

However much we elevate and expand the playoff, the regular season also has to count for something. There are seven teams across the FBS level that finished the year with one loss, and one more that closed it out undefeated. All eight of those teams made the playoffs. As soon as Notre Dame lost a second game, their fate was always out of their hands.

Notre Dame’s snub is of course a disappointment for Irish fans, but it’s also a situation that could have been avoided by simply not starting the season 0–2.

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