Nick Saban continues to back Fighting Irish before National Championship kicks off

Just hours before the Miami Hurricanes and the Indiana Hoosiers kicked off the National Championship game, none other than Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman sat beside Nick Saban at the ESPN College GameDay desk.

As Freeman broke down what he and the Irish have done throughout the offseason, and what they were looking to do next season, Saban made sure to get his thoughts out there on the current state of Notre Dame football.

Obviously, the Irish were left out of this season's College Football Playoff, leapfrogged and replaced by the Hurricanes. What followed was a mix of frustration and disappointment for the team.

Nick Saban continues to support Notre Dame in the CFP

However, Saban, who is virtually undeniably the greatest college football coach of all time, never backed down on his support for Notre Dame.

"I've said time and time again, [Notre Dame] deserved to be in the Playoffs," Saban told Freeman ahead of the National Championship.

Just a few weeks ago, Saban expressed a similar sentiment while talking about the 12 teams that did get into the playoffs, including his former team, the Alabama Crimson Tide.

"I think maybe something we can learn from this because to me, this has got to be devastating for Notre Dame’s team not to get an opportunity to get into the Playoff," Saban said. "We can learn something from this that will help us to come up with a little better criteria of trying to make sure we get the 12 best teams in the Playoff and also address this idea of conference championship games.”

The Irish had been in contention for the entire stretch of CFP rankings until the Hurricanes knocked Notre Dame out of the bracket in the final ranking, despite neither team playing the prior weekend.

Now that the playoffs have reached their endpoint, it's hard to argue that Miami didn't deserve its spot in the bracket, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Notre Dame was snubbed.