Saban Predicts a Pair of Former Alabama Assistants Will Make CFP Title Game

Folks across the college football sphere passed the offseason time by looking ahead to January, making their picks for this season’s national champion; and Nick Saban was no different.

The seven-time national champion head coach and the crew on ESPN’s “College GameDay” made their picks for this year’s champion during the program’s first show of the 2026 season in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Those who watch the show regularly know that Saban does his best to remain unbiased, and he continued to do that Saturday with his picks, not selecting his former team, Alabama, to go on a run to the title game.

Instead, he picked two of his former assistant coaches to play on CFB’s biggest stage: Miami’s Mario Cristobal and Texas’s Steve Sarkisian.

Cristobal served as Alabama’s assistant head coach, offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator from 2013 to 2016. He thrived in Tuscaloosa as a recruiter, being named the National Recruiter of the Year by 247Sports in the 2015 cycle after bringing in the No. 1 class. Cristobal was also an elite coach at Alabama, as proven by his offensive line winning the inaugural Joe Moore Award, given to the toughest, most physical line in the nation.

Now, in Year 5 at Miami, Cristobal has taken the Hurricanes to new heights. Most recently, he led Miami to its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance and a national championship game appearance during the 2025-26 season.

Sarkisian had two stints at Alabama during his coaching tenure. Saban first hired him as an analyst in 2016 after a messy firing at USC. Sarkisian stepped in as the team’s offensive coordinator in the national title game later that season against Clemson and ultimately lost.

After a two-year stint in the NFL as the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator, Sarkisian returned to Tuscaloosa for a two-year term as the program’s offensive coordinator, winning a national championship with the Tide along the way.

Since taking the job in Austin, Sarkisian has brought the Longhorns to the cusp of the college football mountaintop, but has yet the reach the peak. Some are calling a make-or-break campaign for Sarkisian and Texas, and Saban has the Longhorns finally getting back to the championship game.

As for the Saban’s title game pick, he expressed difficulty in finalizing his selection, noting that it was just his “best guess."

“The number of good teams that we talked about today, there's no magic in who you pick and it's just your best guess, but I'm saying Miami versus Texas and Miami wins,” Saban said.

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