Nick Saban isn’t sold on the idea of college football’s playoff growing for growth’s sake.
With talk around the College Football Playoff heating up after the NCAA Basketball Tournament moved from 68 teams to 76 on May 7, the former Alabama coach made clear Thursday morning that he has a limit in mind. Speaking with ESPN’s Mike Greenberg on Get Up, Saban said he’s comfortable with a 16-team setup, but anything beyond that starts pushing the sport too far.
“Well, I just think that there were three occasions where we played 15 games when I was coaching, and I thought 15 games was too many games for college players to play in a season,” Saban said. “Now you can potentially play 17. So if we go to anything beyond 16, to me, you're adding games without eliminating conference championship games, which I think are venues that people really enjoy.
“So I'm kind of going for 16, or you could take the model where you could use the conference championship games as a wild card type of thing, and that's part of the playoff system, so that in effect would go to 20 without adding more games.”
The CFP has already made a major jump in recent years, going from a four-team field from 2014-23 to a 12-team format over the past two seasons. Since then, the conversation has moved toward even bigger ideas, including 16-team and 24-team models. The Big Ten has been the loudest voice pushing for 24, while SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has come out strongly against it.
Saban, who knows the playoff as well as anyone after guiding Alabama to eight postseason appearances and three national titles, said the player should be the priority in any future discussion.
“We need to take the player into consideration, not just the financial circumstances of increasing the playoffs,” Saban said. “I don't think, other than Notre Dame last year, there was any team that didn't get in a playoff that would have a chance to win the championship.
“So, what's it about? Crowning a champion, or trying to financially squeeze more money out of the College Football Playoff at the expense of how many games a player has to play?”
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