Two days before No. 2 Alabama flies out to Phoenix for the College Football Playoff national championship game, coach Nick Saban held his final press conference in Tuscaloosa.

He stressed the importance of the team’s preparation going into the title game against No. 1 Clemson on Monday.

“Players have got to understand: This is not a bowl game,” Saban said. “We don’t go out there and practice for a week. We’re in game week. We’ve got to get ready to play the game here. We’ve got to travel. We can practice out there once and kind of go from there.”

It’s not like previous national title games. It’s a much quicker turnaround between games, instead of the month allotted in the BCS era.

Alabama and Clemson both have just over a week and a half to prepare after winning their respective semifinal games.

“We’ve never been in this situation,” Saban said. “We always in the other championship games that we’ve been in, it was a one-game season really. So you went from Dec. 6 or whenever the last game was right to the game. So we did some research on what people did a year ago that were in this position, how they prepared their team, and used some of those ideas to see if we could get the right balance and the right formula. But you never know until they go out there.”