ORLANDO, Fla. _ At least the king of college football feels UCF's pain.
Unlike so many of the Power 5 propagandists in the national media who have ridiculed UCF's self-proclaimed national championship, Alabama coach Nick Saban _ the greatest coach in college football history _ actually commended UCF.
Saban answered thoughtfully and profoundly Wednesday when I asked him at SEC Media Days if he felt for a program like the UCF Knights after they finished with a perfect season and weren't even considered for the College Football Playoff semifinals.
"Look, I have tremendous amount of compassion for UCF and what they accomplished this year in going undefeated," Saban said. "We've only had one team that's gone undefeated and won the national championship, and that was in 2009. And that is very, very, very difficult to do for anyone. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for the players.
"Relative to UCF, I can't tell you how or why or if they should have gotten in the playoffs," Saban added. "... I'm not responsible for the system that determines who gets in the playoffs. But I think they did a good job of determining who got in the playoffs, and we can have another discussion about the future of the playoffs and how many teams should get in the playoffs. But (if you increase the number of playoff teams,) you're going to minimize the bowl games. I stood up here 10 years ago (when talking about starting a playoff) and said, 'As soon as we do this, it's going to diminish bowl games and the importance of bowl games. Everybody will just be interested in the playoffs.'
"Well, that's where we are right now. I mean, we have players choosing not to play in bowl games because it's not important because they're going to save themselves for the draft. All of these things are not good for college football."
He closed his comments by saying, "There are a lot of philosophical questions that everybody needs to sort of take into consideration as what the best way to do this whole thing is, and I don't think I have the answer to that. That's not what I get paid to do."
