Paul Finebaum, Heather Dinich debate Nick Saban's '12 best teams' in playoff comments

Nick Saban just wants the 12 best teams in the College Football Playoff. How do you get that? Well, the system has a chance to do so.

But, Saban’s idea is without conference championships weighing heavily. Paul Finebuam and Heather Dinich debated if Saban made sense ahead of the first iteration of the 12-team playoff.

For reference, Saban’s initial comments can be seen below. 

“The downside of it is, I just wish that we could put the 12 best teams in the playoffs,” Saban said. “Not worry about conference champions and all that kind of stuff. And if you do get beat in the conference championship game, and you’re one of the best teams, you still should get in there because you played really quality opponents and you played good football. So that’s my only concern about it. I just want to see the best football teams and I think most people want to see the best world teams.”

Finebaum agreed with Saban but with a caveat.

“Well Greeny of course Saban is right but there’s so many difficulties of getting to that point,” Finebaum said on Get Up. “And we couldn’t have gotten to the 12-team playoff with that type of result. But one thing about coach Saban and everyone knows how much I love him, but he has won two national championships at Alabama, two, when win he didn’t even win his own division. 

“He was still able to get in somehow, someway so he can complain. I don’t blame him for doing so because a couple of years ago he should have been in and TCU did get in and lost by 150 in the national championship game, and Alabama was the second best team in the country that year behind Georgia.”

Nick Saban has a point on 12-team playoff, but a little off

Saban just wants the 12 best teams, but then at that point, you might as well get rid of conference’s while we’re at it.

“He absolutely has a point, there are many people especially in the SEC who feel the way he does and there’s a reason when they went to a four-team playoff, they didn’t have automatic qualifiers,” Dinich said. “It’s because you can have an upset in a championship game that can put a three or four loss team in the College Football Playoff because you win your conference championship. Right now, it’s the five highest ranked conference champions, the next seven highest ranked teams.”

Then, citing Saban’s wish, Dinich gave an example.

“Let’s just say hypothetically Florida State somehow is playing a three-loss North Carolina team in the ACC championship game,” Dinich said. “The Tar Heels win, are the Tar Heels one of the best teams in the country? Mack Brown will tell you yes, but probably some other people outside of that world might say no. 

“But I’ll tell you this. I talked to Greg Sankey … and he told me there’s some people out there who think that I’m not doing the best things for the greater good of college football, that I’m only interested in the best thing for the SEC. He said if that were the case, then it would be the 12 best teams.”