Alabama head coach Nick Saban recently appeared on ESPN and suggested some changes to the way college football teams can create their schedule and how the four-team playoff is constructed.
“We should all play teams in the Power Five conferences,” Saban said to ESPN.
He went on to state that 10 conference games and two nonconference games against other Power Five teams is the way that all teams should build their schedule. Saban mentions that this gives him a better way to evaluate his team as opposed to including “three or four games a year that nobody’s really interested in.”
“You eliminate the six wins to get in a bowl game and now you can have a different kind of scheduling that is more fan interest, more good games, bring out the better quality team,” Saban said. “And whether you expand the playoff or have a system where it’s like now — we take the top 12 teams and decide what bowl game they go to — just take them all.”
This sounds nice in theory, but just because Saban’s team plays a weak schedule doesn’t mean the rules should change just for him. This doesn’t work because teams still need tune-ups in the first couple weeks. No team is a finely tuned machine just based on practice. Playing one team like William and Mary or South Alabama is great in week one or two when it gives your team a chance to work out the kinks before getting into the meat of the schedule. It’s like a preseason game, but still counts towards the record, plus, it gives the chance for thrilling upsets like Appalachian State University over the University of Michigan in 2007 or North Dakota State University over the University of Iowa last year.
Nobody is telling Saban that he can only play one big nonconference game. He can go out and schedule three Power Five teams instead of Fresno State, Colorado State and Mercer University, which are all on the Crimson Tide’s schedule this year. Certainly, there are three, or at least two, other Power Five teams who would be willing to take on the Crimson Tide. NC State would provide Alabama a good challenge while giving Saban a chance to legitimately evaluate his team, but maybe he’s too worried about the level of play in the ACC’s Atlantic Division.
Saban’s Crimson Tide take on Florida State the first week of the season and he would like to see more of these marquee matchups. Last year, there were 13 Power Five week-one matchups and this year there are 11. The risk with these huge games is that a team could lose their chance at the playoff in week one. If Alabama loses to Florida State in week one and goes on to win the Southeastern Conference Championship, what quality wins will they have? On the other hand, Florida State will have more opportunities to pick up wins that will impress the committee in the ACC’s Atlantic Division.
Games like this are what Saban is thinking about when he wants to play 12 Power Five games as opposed to how some teams only play 10 or 11 currently. He also mentions playing 10 conference games, instead of the current eight or nine. More quality games on the schedule lessens the risk of playing one huge game in week one, which is what Saban faces this year.
As for the playoff talk, expanding to 12 teams would water down the regular season, which is undoubtedly the greatest regular season in all of sports. Every single game matters in college football and one loss puts a team’s championship hopes on life support, which Penn State proved last year. The regular season is why college football is so beloved and there’s no reason to change it.
If the playoff was 12 teams this year, NC State would likely only need to beat one team out of the Clemson, Florida State and Louisville group and win every other game (without even qualifying for the conference championship) to be in the playoff, or at least in a very serious discussion.
In 2015, UNC-Chapel Hill won 11 games, but its best win was against either eight-win Pittsburgh or seven-win NC State. If the playoff consisted of 12 teams, they would have been selected, even though it was clear that the quality of their schedule was not deserving of being deemed one of the 12 best teams in the country.
Saban’s plan to require Power Five teams to play only Power Five games takes away a tune-up game for teams and regardless, he can schedule a harder schedule if he wants to. He doesn’t need a rule to enforce that. Expanding the playoff takes away from the regular season, which is the last thing college football should do.
