Throughout his storied teaching profession, Nick Saban hardly ever shied away from a possibility to precise his ideas a couple of subject associated to varsity soccer.
Throughout his newest look on the “Pat McAfee Show,” the seven-time nationwide championship successful coach mentioned among the potential drawbacks of the brand new 12-team School Soccer Playoff format.
Beneath the expanded playoff, the 5 highest-ranked convention champions will obtain an computerized postseason bid. The 4 highest-ranked convention champions will probably be granted a bye for the primary spherical. Saban recommended that the idea may lead to some unintended penalties.
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Nick Saban sits on the ESPN School Gameday set previous to the NCAA soccer sport between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Ohio State Buckeyes at Beaver Stadium in College Park, Pa. on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024.
“By giving the conference champions, when they’re not the highest-ranked teams, the bye… what it really affects is the path to the championship,” he argued.
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“And when you don’t seed the teams based on the quality of the total season performance…” he continued. “The number one seed should have, technically, the easiest path to the championship and that doesn’t really happen when you allow conference champions to get seeded in the top-four when they’re not one of the top-four teams.”
Sep 7, 2024; Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA; Nick Saban walks off the sphere after it was renamed in his honor at Bryant-Denny Stadium throughout halftime of Alabama’s win over South Florida 42-16. (Gary Cosby Jr.-USA TODAY Community by way of Imagn Pictures)
Final week’s slate of faculty soccer video games featured a number of upsets. Alabama misplaced to Oklahoma, Florida upset Ole Miss, and Auburn knocked off Texas A&M. Alabama, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M will all enter the ultimate week of the common season with three losses.
Saban argued towards three-loss groups being rewarded by making it to the playoff.
“I do think as we boil down to this, like right now, hard to reward a team with three losses,” Saban mentioned. “Especially the kind of losses Ole Miss had and like Alabama’s had to pretty .500 teams I want to call them. Pretty average teams. You’ve got some other teams that maybe they didn’t play the same competition, but they didn’t lose games to average teams either.”
Alabama head coach Nick Saban speaks throughout NCAA school soccer Southeastern Convention Media Days Tuesday, July 19, 2022, in Atlanta. (AP Photograph/John Bazemore)
From Saban’s viewpoint, the Georgia Bulldogs are the one potential three-loss staff that needs to be in line for severe playoff consideration. Georgia enters their annual in-state rivalry showdown with Georgia Tech on Nov. 29 with two losses.
The Bulldogs are then scheduled to play the winner of this weekend’s Texas-Texas A&M sport within the SEC Championship sport in Atlanta. If Georgia drops that sport, Saban doesn’t imagine they need to be eradicated from playoff rivalry.
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“If Georgia actually plays in the SEC Championship Game, they really shouldn’t be penalized if they should happen to lose the game,” Saban mentioned. “They would end up with three losses. I don’t think a team that didn’t play in the championship game that has two losses should get in, especially if they played a good game and it wasn’t a blowout.”
Oregon remained in the highest spot within the newest playoff rankings, with Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, and Notre Dame rounding out the top-5.
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