Should 3-loss teams make the CFP? Nick Saban might only think of one

Alabama football is among teams whose College Football Playoff hopes are on life support.

Ole Miss is another. Both dropped games they were favored to win last weekend, and both SEC teams picked up their third losses of the season.

“I think when we boil it down to this, like right now, it’s hard to reward a three-loss team,” former Alabama coach Nick Saban said on the Pat McAfee Show Wednesday. “Especially the kind of losses Ole Miss had and like Alabama’s had to pretty much a .500 team, I’d call them. Pretty average team. You have some other teams that maybe didn’t play the same competition, but they didn’t lose games to average teams either.”

Saban said he thinks it matters. The only three-loss team that Saban thinks would have an argument to be in the CFP field would be Georgia, which right now has two losses.

“If Georgia is actually playing in the SEC Championship Game, they really shouldn’t be penalized if they were to lose the game,” Saban said. “They would end up with three losses. I don’t think a team that didn’t play in the championship game and has two losses should get in, especially if they played a good game and it wasn’t a blowout.”

Alabama (8-3, 4-3 SEC) will close out the regular season by facing Auburn in the Iron Bowl on Saturday (2:30 p.m. CT, ABC) at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Conference championships will be played the following weekend before the final CFP rankings are revealed.

Alabama held the no. 13 in the ranking that was revealed on Tuesday.

Nick Kelly is a beat writer from Alabama AL.com and Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X and Instagram.