Nick Saban’s defense of Alabama, Kalen DeBoer for CFP is pure SEC bias

To the shock of many college football fans, the College Football Playoff bracket that was revealed on Sunday afternoon does not include the Alabama Crimson Tide in the 12-team field. Perhaps the only question and by far the biggest debate leading up to the reveal was whether Kalen DeBoer's three-loss team would get into the field over the ACC runner-up, the SMU Mustangs.

Warde Manuel and Co. clearly went the way of valuing conference championship games, which left Alabama as the most notable snub from the 12-team bracket. Of course, that was a main talking point on the ESPN broadcast of the bracket reveal. They also happened to have former Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban providing his analysis

And to the shock of absolutely no one, Saban's defense of Alabama and insinuation as to why his former team should've been in over SMU was overflowing with SEC bias. If he was trying to hide that, he did a helluva poor job doing so.

Nick Saban doesn't hide SEC bias in defense of Alabama after CFP snub

Saban opined that he was worried that strength of schedule wasn't being valued enough, clearly a nod to Alabama and their stronger SOS than SMU, and that it would de-incentivize coaches from scheduling tough in the non-conference on the broadcast:

"I think one of the things I’ve mentioned throughout this football season is, if we don’t take strength of schedule into consideration, is there any benefit to scheduling really good teams in the future? Here at Alabama, we’re supposed to play Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Florida State in the future outside the league. Those are great games for fans to see. That’s what I think we should be doing in college football is creating more good inventory for great games that people are interested in. Do you enhance people wanting to do that? What’s the athletic director going to do? He may cancel all those games now knowing that the SEC is tough enough."

Let's be clear, strength of schedule should absolutely be valued. However, that argument being used for Alabama this season is pure SEC bias. The Crimson Tide's non-conference schedule featured games against Mercer, Western Kentucky, South Florida and a barely-bowl-eligible Wisconsin team. Their strength of schedule is literally all about the strength of the SEC.

That shouldn't be discounted but it's also a league in which Alabama lost three games, two of which came against teams that finished 6-6 overall in Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. So we're supposed to value those losses because the Crimson Tide played tough games in the conference? Even if the SEC is the best league in college football, that argument just doesn't hold enough weight to anyone not buying into the bias around the conference.

SMU getting in was the right call. While it was a lose-lose situation for the CFP Selection Committee as they had to either value SOS or conference championship games, siding with the latter in the end is the right call. And Saban providing SEC bias propoganda won't change that — though the seeding, on the other hand, could lead to some changes in the Playoff format moving forward.