As a lifelong Georgia football fan, I don’t make a habit of agreeing with Nick Saban.
This is a man who has ruined more than a few perfectly good Saturdays for me. And one particularly painful Monday night in January 2018 that I’d prefer we never speak of again.
But here we are.
Saban, a seven-time national champion and arguably the greatest college football coach to do it, has a problem with the sport’s latest attempt to reinvent itself. And I hate to admit it, but Coach has a point.
College football is reportedly preparing to expand its playoff from 12 to 24 teams beginning in 2027. On Friday, October 16, ESPN and the College Football Playoff reached a preliminary “handshake” agreement that could add $345 million annually to the postseason, according to ESPN.
That’s a lot of money, even by college football’s increasingly creative financial standards.
But there’s a catch. To accommodate the expanded postseason, major conference championship games, including the SEC and Big Ten titles, could disappear.
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Think about that for a second. College football wants to get rid of championship games so it can have more?
Somewhere, a television executive is probably explaining why this makes perfect sense. Saban, meanwhile, is suggesting everyone pump the brakes.
During an appearance on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show Friday, the former Alabama coach said he’d prefer a 16-team playoff, with conference championship games potentially serving as play-in opportunities.
“I would be for 16,” Saban said. “I think that would be a good compromise.”
And for once, I find myself nodding along with the man who once made second-and-26 part of my weekly therapy sessions.
“My only concern about the 24-team College Football Playoff is the amount of games these guys are playing,” Saban said. “I get a little concerned about how much is too much when it comes to how many games a college player plays.”
Depending on the final schedule, a team could potentially play 18 or 19 games on its way to a national championship. That’s a lot of Saturdays, especially for players who theoretically still have homework due Monday.
That is if they’re required to go to class; for the sake of argument, let’s assume they are.
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Expansion isn’t inherently a bad idea. A bigger playoff means more programs can compete for a national title. It could also make November more interesting for fans whose teams usually spend that month calculating increasingly impossible postseason scenarios.
And for the rest of us, it means a few more opportunities to experience every human emotion in the span of three hours possible and confirm that, no, we’re not actually dead inside.
Let’s not assume this is all about emotions and fandom – money matters. Schools face growing expenses, from player compensation to funding other athletic programs. Saban acknowledged that on Friday, bluntly noting that revenue is driving the conversation.
Sigh, again he’s right about that, too.
Still, something about college football’s relationship with tradition is almost comical. The sport sells us on rivalries, pageantry, marching bands (if you’re an HBCU), and the importance of every Saturday. Then, when enough money appears, some of those supposedly essential traditions suddenly become negotiable.
Conference championships aren’t perfect, and plenty of fans have questioned whether they’re necessary in an expanded playoff era. But they’ve provided meaningful stakes and memorable moments, especially in conferences like the SEC and Big Ten. Now, those games may be expendable.
To be clear, nothing is final. The agreement between ESPN and the playoff is preliminary, and the proposed format still requires approval.
But I think it’s fair to say college football isn’t trying to build a better championship system; it’s trying to figure out how to sell us more football.
I never thought I’d be defending Nick Saban on a Saturday morning, but stranger things have happened.
