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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
James Morgan

Nick Saban makes SEC championship prediction

Former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban predicts that the Georgia Bulldogs will face the Texas Longhorns in the 2024 SEC championship game. Georgia is already scheduled to play at Texas this fall, so the SEC championship would be a rematch between the two teams.

The 16-team SEC will not have any divisions during the 2024 college football season. The two teams with the best conference records will represent the conference in the SEC championship, which will be held in Atlanta on Dec. 7, 2024.

Notably, Saban does not think that his former team, Alabama, will advance to the SEC championship. Saban, who now works as a college football analyst on ESPN, knows more about his Alabama roster than any other analyst.

“I think Georgia and Texas (will make the SEC championship). But I don’t think there’s any team right now, or any coach that you would talk to, including myself for many, many years, that right now there’s not some part of their team they’re concerned about,” said Nick Saban.

“How those problems, sort of, get resolved, whether it’s a young player that comes in and makes an impact, or an older player that develops consistency, those are the question marks that I think make it impossible to make predictions right now.”

There’s a long way to go before December and injuries are impossible to predict, so what Saban is saying makes a lot of sense. Saban does think that Texas could have to rely on its quarterback depth at some point in 2024.

“But I think Texas if their defense comes through and they can replace some of the interior people that they lost that were high draft picks and all that, they are really good offensively… Depth at quarterback is probably really important for then, because Ewers has missed time the last couple years,” continued Saban.

“I think Georgia has got a really good team,” said Saban. “I believe in our Alabama team, too. I believe in Jalen Milroe. I just think the question marks in the secondary, until those get resolved, it’s hard to, sort of, jump on that bandwagon.”

Missing a SEC championship game does not spell the end of a team’s season in the 12-team College Football Playoff era. The SEC is predicted to have several teams make the playoff.

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