ATLANTA — Remember the “pick me, pick me, pick me” pleas of children when elementary school kickball teams were selected by captains at recess?
Meet Nick Saban and Kirby Smart following No. 8 Alabama’s 27-24 upset of No. 1 Georgia at Saturday’s Southeastern Conference championship game inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Saban’s Crimson Tide and Smart’s Bulldogs are each 12-1 and are at the mercy of the College Football Playoff selection committee, which will announce its four-team playoff field at noon Sunday on ESPN. Since 2006, when the Bowl Championship Series was pairing two teams to play for the national championship, the SEC has annually placed at least one representative in a postseason format.
“We won the SEC,” Saban said when beginning his argument for inclusion. “We beat the No. 1 team in the country, which everybody on the committee thought was the No. 1 team in the country, and they won 29 straight games. If we needed to do something to pass the eye test, I would guess that probably contributed to it significantly.
“We’re not the same team that we were when we played Texas. We’re not the same team we were when we played South Florida. People should look at the whole body of work and what we were able to accomplish and what we were able to do.”