During ESPN's "College GameDay" coverage of a chaotic Week 2 of the US college football season, former Alabama head coach Nick Saban argued that the College Football Playoff selection process should place more weight on strength of schedule and the quality of wins and losses, rather than simply counting overall win totals. His comments come as several ranked and high-profile teams suffered surprising defeats, prompting fresh debate about how playoff-worthy teams are identified and whether the current system undervalues difficult matchups.

Saban said the sport now rewards teams for accumulating wins rather than for the quality of opponents faced, arguing that "some losses are better than some wins" and calling for a better metric to judge performance. The article notes this echoes arguments often made by supporters of the SEC, which is moving to a nine-game conference schedule that will produce more losses league-wide. However, the piece cautions that reverting to more subjective, resume-based judgements resembles the much-criticised BCS era, and suggests a blend of efficiency-based computer rankings (such as SP+) with strength-of-schedule data—illustrated by Alabama's 2025 season, where a blowout playoff loss to Georgia was arguably underweighted relative to their overall season resume.