Nick Saban names historic college football program that deserved to be in the CFP

With the College Football Playoff bracket unveiled Sunday, everyone around the sport had opinions on Notre Dame being left out of the 12-team field.

The Fighting Irish (10-2) were No. 10 in the CFP rankings released Tuesday, two spots ahead of Miami (10-2), but despite both teams being idle this week, the committee flipped them and put the Hurricanes in the playoffs over the Irish.

Miami's Week 1 head-to-head win over Notre Dame hadn't been a differentiating factor until now, but ultimately gets the Hurricanes into the field.

Like many, Nick Saban had some strong thoughts on Notre Dame's exclusion, but his point of contention wasn't about Miami over the Irish. Rather, he aimed the playoffs' overall setup, which allowed two Group of 5 teams -- AAC champion Tulane and Sun Belt champion James Madison -- to get into the field as automatic qualifiers, while Notre Dame and Texas (10-3) missed out.

"I think the fact of the matter is all three of those teams should have gotten in and deserved the right to play in the College Football Playoff," Saban said. "For years now, we have kept tweaking the criteria of how we select teams to be in the playoff, whether it was a two-team BCS, whether it's a four-team playoff and now 12-team playoff, but really I think you're going to have two teams in the playoff -- no disrespect to the Group of 5 -- that are nowhere near ranked as highly as some other teams that are much better than them.

"And I think that may be something we can learn from this because to me this has got to be devastating for Notre Dame's team not to get an opportunity to play in the playoffs, that 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.

"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 in some kind of way. But there was no way around it."

Tulane (10-3), which beat North Texas 34-21 in the AAC championship game Friday night, was ranked No. 20 in the CFP rankings from Tuesday and No. 17 in the AP poll Sunday. James Madison (12-1), which beat Troy 31-14 in the Sun Belt championship game Friday night, was No. 25 in the Tuesday CFP rankings and No. 19 in the new AP poll Sunday.

Tulane lost 45-10 to Ole Miss in the regular season and now plays the Rebels again in the first round of the playoffs as the No. 11 seed.

James Madison, which lost 28-14 to Louisville in its only game against a Power 4 team, opens against Oregon as the No. 12 seed.

Notre Dame won its final 10 games and lost only to playoff teams Miami and Texas A&M by a combined four points in Weeks 1-2.

"I think you have 10 teams that are getting evaluated on one set of criteria in this year's polling, and you have two teams that are getting in the playoffs evaluated on a whole different set of criteria based on the highest five conference champions getting in," Saban said.

"And I think some kind of way we've got to bring that to balance that we shouldn't be evaluating teams in the playoff with a different set of criteria."