TCU football coach Sonny Dykes responds to comments by former ‘Bama coach Nick Saban
Nick Saban may be retired from coaching football, but the former Alabama head coach still hasn’t gotten over his belief that the Crimson Tide were snubbed in the 2022 College Football Playoffs.
Making an appearance on the Pat McAfee show on Saturday, Saban sent a shot at TCU while being asked about teams being left out of the playoffs in general.
“We would’ve been 13-point favorites against TCU if we would’ve played them,” Saban said. “They got into the playoffs and we didn’t. I’m not criticizing TCU because it wasn’t their fault, but that is the subjective part of it.”
Alabama lost twice that season despite being favored over LSU and Tennessee.
Saban and McAfee laughed together when McAfee asked what happened to TCU during the national championship game against Georgia. TCU lost 65-7.
Word of Saban’s remarks got back to Horned Frogs head coach Sonny Dykes after he led TCU to a 49-28 win over Arizona on Saturday. Here’s how Dykes responded:
“I don’t care about that. We were there, we beat Michigan, we played for a national championship,” Dykes said. “Everybody can say what they wanna say, I don’t care. It’s ancient history, I wish we would’ve played better in that game, but we played as well as we could play for 14 weeks, and I’ve never seen a college football team play as well as we did for 14 straight weeks.”
Saban got his chance in 2023 when Alabama faced Michigan in the semifinals like TCU had the previous year. The Wolverines, who had most of their nucleus back from the 2022 team, defeated Alabama 27-20 in Saban’s final game.
Maybe that’s why Saban hasn’t gotten over the perceived snub, but Dykes has moved on and is focusing on TCU finishing the year strong.
“I don’t care what anybody says about it, we were there and he wasn’t,” Dykes said at the end of his press conference on Saturday.
This story was originally published November 23, 2024 at 7:02 PM.
