Nick Saban reveals his thoughts on the College Football Playoff, how he's changed his tune on CFP expansion

Until 2014, the college football national championship came down to the top two teams in the country. There was no such thing as a four-team College Football Playoff, no discussion of expanding the format and no opting out of bowl games.

That seems like a far cry from the current landscape. But as the CFP prepares to expand to 12 teams, that could open the door for more teams to be in contention in the middle of November. Count Nick Saban in the group supporting that expansion.

Saban, speaking on “Hey Coach and The Nick Saban Show” Thursday night, discussed how he’s changed his tune a few times during his time at Alabama. At one point, he pushed to keep the two-team, Bowl Championship Series format.

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Now, Saban is on record in favor of growing the CFP from four teams to 12 teams. There’s one big factor involved in that decision: keeping the tradition of bowl games alive.

“For a long time … I wasn’t for the playoffs,” Saban said. “When we had a two-team playoff, they picked the best two teams, you played for the national championship. I thought that was a good thing. Part of the reason for that was bowl games have always been a real tradition of college football and it provided a lot of positive self-gratification for a lot of teams who had good seasons, maybe didn’t win the championship or whatever, but got to go to the Sugar Bowl or the Orange Bowl or even the Liberty Bowl or whatever bowl it was that they got to go to. It was a real positive for their team, their players, for all the hard work that they’d done and all that. That’s what made college football a little bit different than every other sport because you’re playing for a championship.

“So when we started the four-team playoff, I was one of the first to say this is a good thing, but it’s going to diminish the importance of bowl games. So what has happened now? If you’re not in the playoffs, half your team doesn’t want to play in a bowl game. Anybody that’s got a chance to go out for the draft, anybody that’s thinking about transferring or whatever. And now you’ve got name, image and likeness, so maybe you ought to get into the portal and see how much money you can get from some other team. There’s all these dynamics that are created that bowl games, sort of, the importance got diminished.”

Nick Saban: An expanded CFP means more fan interest

Saban outlined his argument for an expanded CFP, acknowledging how much more fans would pay attention to it. In addition, he thinks bowl games will become an even bigger part of the postseason picture again.

He also said having more teams in contention — such as this year’s Alabama team, which came in at No. 8 in the latest CFP rankings — for a CFP spot would add to the excitement of November football.

“The last few years, I am actually an advocate of having a bigger playoff because if you have a bigger playoff, you have more fan interest because the only fan interest now is in the playoffs, aight?” Saban said. “You have a four-team playoff, so you’ve got seven or eight teams that still have a chance to get in the playoffs, so their fan bases are still excited about what’s going on and everybody else is a little disappointed. If you have a 12-team playoff, you’d probably have 20-25 teams that would still have a chance to get into the 12-team playoff. We would have a chance to get in a 12-team playoff even though we’ve had a couple disappointing losses.

“And I think there would be a lot more fan interest on a national basis for a lot more teams. I’m actually for that. Now, that will completely diminish bowl games and, hopefully, some kind of way, we can make the bowl games a part of this playoff system so that we don’t diminish some of the bowl games and the traditions that go with those bowl games.”

Saban: I don’t think playing teams twice is a problem

Saban initially took the question from a caller who wanted to talk about playing teams twice — a stronger possibility with the 12-team model. That’s when he reminded the caller he coached in the NFL in the AFC East with the Miami Dolphins and had to face those teams twice per year.

That means he had to face some good Steelers teams twice. In fact, the Dolphins faced them three times in one year, including the postseason. It didn’t go well.

“One year, we played the Pittsburgh Steelers three times. We lost to them twice in the regular season and we lost to them in the playoffs,” Saban said. “We only lost five games, we lost three times to the Steelers. I know about playing the same team twice.

“Anyway, so that wouldn’t be the reason for it. It would probably happen some, but that would be OK. I don’t think that’s a problem.”