Nick Saban Calls for Change After Notre Dame Snubbed from CFB Playoff Bracket

Legendary head coach Nick Saban lobbied for further changes to the College Football Playoff selection formula after 10-2 Notre Dame narrowly missed out on the 12-team playoff field.

During ESPN's bracket reveal show, Saban specifically pointed to the inclusion of two Group of Five schools, Tulane and James Madison.

"I think the fact of the matter is all three of those teams should've gotten in and deserve the right to play in the College Football Playoff," he said. "And for years now, we have kept tweaking the criteria of how we select teams to be in the Playoff, whether it was a two-team BCS, whether it's a four-team Playoff and now a 12-team Playoff. But really, I think that you're going to have two teams in the Playoff, no disrespect to the Group of Five, that are nowhere near ranked as highly as some other teams that are much better than them.

"And I think that maybe something we can learn from this because to me this is has got to be devastating for Notre Dame's team not to get an opportunity to play in the playoffs, that we can learn something from this that will help us come up with a little better criteria of trying to make sure we get the best 12 teams in the Playoff. And also, address this whole idea of conference championship games. And also, the tiebreakers that get you in the conference championship game, and each conference has a significant impact on what happens in this whole thing. So, I don't think there was a good answer for all this."

Saban's remarks begin at the 2:45 mark of the video below:

The CFP selection committee was left with an impossible task because no solution to appease everyone existed. The last two at-large bids were going to be contentious one way or the other.

By picking Alabama and Miami, though, the committee may have opted for the toughest course to justify.

The Crimson Tide are getting in with three losses, one of which came against 5-7 Florida State. The idea they shouldn't be punished for losing the SEC title game was also undercut by the fact BYU did drop one spot after coming up short in the Big 12 championship.

Then there's the fact Miami leapfrogged Notre Dame despite neither team playing another game. The Hurricanes were finally rewarded for their head-to-head win over the Fighting Irish after that didn't count whatsoever in every edition of the CFP rankings before that.

Saban point about having Tulane and James Madison also obscures a bigger structural problem within college football thanks to conference consolidation.

It took one year for college football power brokers to tweak the 12-team format.

This year, the top four seeds went to the highest-ranked teams rather than the four best conference championships. As a result, two Big Ten teams (Indiana and Ohio State) sit atop the bracket.

Further changes are probably likely after Sunday's divisive reveal. Leaving as little as possible to interpretation would at least take a lot of heat off the committee's back.