{"id":844621,"date":"2026-09-11T22:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T22:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/844621\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T22:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T22:52:11","slug":"nick-saban-shades-big-ten-for-having-3-good-teams-compared-to-sec-after-ap-top-25-poll-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/844621\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Saban Shades Big Ten for Having ‘3 Good Teams’ Compared to SEC After AP Top 25 Poll Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

College GameDay analyst and ex-college football coach Nick Saban provided his honest assessment on the SEC and Big Ten’s depth during his Pat McAfee Show appearance<\/a> on Friday (h\/t Daniel Hager<\/a> of On3).<\/p>\n

“We’ve already got nine teams in the Top 25,” Saban said. “It’s not like the Big Ten where there’s three good teams at the top and then nothing.”<\/p>\n

The SEC teams in the latest AP poll are as follows:<\/p>\n

The Big Ten has three teams in the top six (No. 1 Ohio State, No. 5 Indiana, No. 6 Oregon) and seven in the Top 25 overall (No. 14 USC, No. 16 Penn State, No. 19 Washington and No. 21 Iowa round out the group).<\/p>\n

Saban was a head coach in the SEC for 22 years (five for LSU, 17 for Alabama), winning seven national championships. He also coached Michigan State for five seasons (1995-1999), among other teams during an illustrious coaching career.<\/p>\n

So Saban may have a natural SEC bias, but he’s right about the depth. The SEC has seven teams in the top 12 alone, and it’s not impossible to see any of them competing for a national championship in June. Per FanDuel Sportsbook<\/a>, 13 teams have odds at 25-1 or shorter to win it all, and all seven of those SEC teams are there.<\/p>\n

Still, the Big Ten can show some more depth this year. Of note, USC will have its chances to show its strength with games against OSU, Oregon and Indiana later this year. Penn State got the Matt Campbell era off to a strong start with a 45-0 win over Marshall.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, it’s clear Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon showcase their own strengths, thanks in part to their fantastic passing attacks. They carry the Big Ten flags right now in a national championship chase.<\/p>\n

Saturday features a massive Big Ten-SEC game when No. 1 OSU visits No. 4 Texas, which should at least count for some conference-pride bragging rights. Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. ET in Austin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"College GameDay analyst and ex-college football coach Nick Saban provided his honest assessment on the SEC and Big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-844621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}