Former Alabama offensive coordinator and current FAU head coach Lane Kiffin gets plenty of attention on Twitter these days. His tweet from this morning that talks about Alabama’s case for the College Football Playoff has more than 11,000 retweets (and counting).

Here’s the post he was referring to:

But Saban didn’t say that in 2016. He was asked in a press conference on Nov. 14 about whether being a conference champion should be the most important thing on a team’s resume for the College Football Playoff. Here’s what he said.

Do you think being a conference champion should trump anything else on a resume for playoff consideration?

“I think I could answer the question better if you gave me a specific scenario. I think that being a conference champ is certainly a significant accomplishment for any team or any program.

“But I also think that sometimes there are circumstances that a team can play really, really well for an entire season, and are we basing the playoff on the whole body of work that a team does throughout the year in terms of all the teams that they’ve beat, or the quality opponents they’ve played against, or is it just about one game? And when you talk about conference championships, if you play a conference championship… some leagues don’t even have conference championships. So it’s not a fair and equitable way to base that particular group that didn’t play a conference championship, so you’re doing the whole body of work. Then it seems a little more reasonable to look at everyone else’s entire body of work when you decide who the best teams are.

“Hey, we won a national championship here and didn’t win the SEC. I mean, I think in that particular year, LSU and Alabama had the two best teams, so we had to play in the regular season. We played 9-6, and 42 guys, somebody wrote an article, played in the NFL that played in that game on that field that day. So they were two really, really good teams. Both teams in the same division couldn’t go to the conference championship. So we end up playing in the championship game. So is that the right thing or the wrong thing? I’m sure everybody could debate that. But I believe that those were the two best teams. So it depends on what the goal is.”

You can watch a video of the question at answer here, starting at about 9:28. See for yourself.

The original post seems to have come from a Facebook page titled “Real NCAA Talk.” It’s been shared more than 2,000 times.

The meme has taken off on Facebook and Twitter. It’s been shared by thousands of college football fans.

If you’re aware of an instance when Nick Saban actually said this quote, please email me at ben@tidesports.com and I’ll update this story.

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