The 2023 college football season is a little less than three months away, but Alabama coach Nick Saban still believes that the Crimson Tide should have made the College Football Playoff in 2022. Speaking to Fox Sports' Joel Klatt, Saban took issue with the CFP Selection Committee focusing primarily on overall record and not the power ratings -- including sportsbook lines -- that traditionally favor a blue blood like Alabama.
"All we do is take the teams that win the most games at the end of the year, put them into the playoffs," Saban said. "But do you really get the best teams? When they told me that we would be favored against three out of the four teams that got in the playoff, I'm like, 'Why aren't we in the playoffs?'"
Alabama lost two regular-season games for the first time since 2019 during a disappointing (relatively speaking) 11-2 campaign after starting the season No. 1 in the Preseason AP Top 25. For the first time since 2010, the Tide had two losses heading into the Iron Bowl. The losses kept the Tide out of the SEC Championship Game and ultimately led them to finish No. 5 in the final CFP Rankings.
Of course, Alabama might be a little biased around this topic, and this is not the first time Saban has publicly pushed for his team's inclusion. The Crimson Tide have been underdogs just six times since 2008, Saban's second season in Tuscaloosa. Ironically, Alabama won five of those six games, including a 41-24 shellacking of eventual national champion Georgia in the 2021 SEC Championship Game. However, Alabama has lost 20 games as a favorite in that same span.
"If you're going to have parity, you have to have a better way of figuring out who has the best teams, not just because you lose two games on the last play of the game," Saban said.
Alabama was favored in every game of the 2022 season and went 3-5-1 against the spread vs. Power Five opponents, according to Caesars Sportsbook. Notably, the Crimson Tide closed as 13-point favorites against LSU, but ultimately lost in Baton Rouge for the first time since 2010.
The record argument also hasn't applied to every program equally. UCF notably did not earn a trip to the CFP despite an undefeated record in 2017 because of concerns about schedule strength. Multiple teams from the Big Ten and Big 12 have also been left out with one loss. The only one-loss SEC team to ever miss the College Football Playoff was Texas A&M in 2020.
Vegas odds and power ratings are meant to provide context and aid in projecting matchups heading forward. However, fans might take issue with the idea that they should supersede the actual results on the field. In an expanded College Football Playoff world, this whole discussion becomes largely moot.
