Should three-loss teams reach CFP? Nick Saban may only be thinking one thing

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

Ole Miss is another. Both lost games they were favorites to win last weekend, and both SEC teams suffered their third loss of the season.

“I think when we get down to it, like right now, it’s hard to reward a team with three losses,” former Alabama coach Nick Saban said on the Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday. “Especially the kind of losses that Ole Miss had and like Alabama had against pretty much .500 teams, I want to mention them. Pretty average teams. There are some other teams that maybe haven’t competed in the same competitions, but they haven’t lost games to average teams either.”

Saban said he thinks that’s important. The only three-loss team that Saban believes would have an argument to play in the CFP field would be Georgia, which currently has two losses.

“If Georgia actually plays in the SEC championship game, it really shouldn’t be penalized if it loses the game,” Saban said. “They would end up with three defeats. I don’t think a team that didn’t play in the championship game with two losses should advance, especially if they played a good game and it wasn’t a loss.”

Alabama (8-3, 4-3 SEC) will conclude the regular season by taking on Auburn in the Iron Bowl on Saturday (2:30 p.m. CT, ABC) at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The conference championships will be played the following weekend before the final CFP standings are announced.

Alabama was ranked 13th in the rankings released Tuesday.

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