One of the more interesting aspects of the College Football Playoff rankings process was Alabama coach Nick Saban going on ESPN’s social media platforms, and later FOX Sports during halftime of the Big Ten Championship Game to lobby for Alabama.

To some, it was a fall from grace for a great coach to take that step. But Playoff committee chair Boo Corrigan gave his own perspective on it during a media teleconference on Sunday.

“Yeah, we were in the room watching a game, I believe it was at halftime of one of the games on FOX where Coach Saban was on the Big Ten when he was on, and again, he’s advocating for his program, he’s advocating for the young men in his program just as other coaches are, and those are the relationships they care about,” Corrigan said. “So I think it was perfectly understandable that that’s occurring. But our job, the 13 of us, is to make sure we’re focused in on the games and football judgment and make sure that we get that right.”

Corrigan also shared how close the Nos. 4 and 5 teams, Ohio State and Alabama, were to each other.

“Yeah, we’re looking at everything throughout the entire year, and from a scale standpoint or percentage standpoint, we don’t look at that way,” he said. “We want to make sure as a group we’ve talked through everything, that the voices in the room have been heard, and then use our football judgment from that point forward to make sure that we’re making the right decisions.”