Nick Saban on CFP expansion, not supporting auto bids for G5 champs

Alabama head coach Nick Saban understands what it’s like to coach at a Group of Five school. It’s because of that experience — one year at Toledo in 1995 — that the seven-time national champion isn’t in favor of smaller schools receiving the same preferential treatment as their Power Five counterparts, at least as it pertains to College Football Playoff expansion.

“I don’t like the fact that the [Group of 5] conferences want their conference champions to be in the playoff,” Saban said this week in a Q&A with ESPN’s Mark Schlabach. “I coached at Toledo and we were conference champions. We sure as hell didn’t have any business playing Florida. That’s not the best teams. If you are going to do [an expanded Playoff], get the best teams.”

Saban’s comment came in response to the College Football Playoff’s recent decision to grow in the coming years. The committee recommended expansion from a 4-team field to a 12-team field, which would include the six highest-ranked conference champions, including likely automatic bids for Power Five champs, and six at-large bids based on ranking.

Under this recommendation, there would likely be at least one conference champion from the AAC, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West or Sun Belt that receives a bid.

No Group of Five conference has an auto-bid in the proposal. Yet Saban questions whether this change would hinder the competitiveness of the College Football Playoff.

“The other argument is are we getting the four best teams now? Is there somebody not getting in that could win? I think you could make an argument for Texas A&M [in 2020] but we beat them by [28] points,” Saban said.

Saban also expressed concerns regarding bowl games. With the expansion of the College Football Playoff, some lower-tier bowls may not get the attention they typically would.

“The bigger the playoff gets, the more bowl games are going to dissipate,” Saban said. “How many games are really legitimate for college kids to play?”

Saban also had concerns regarding schedules under the new proposal. He questioned whether the expansion of the playoff would result in some teams playing a much longer season, playing games during holidays such as Christmas or academic weeks such as finals or dead week.

Overall, he felt as though there are “a lot of questions that need to be answered” before the committee makes such a drastic change to the College Football Playoff format, which has not yet been amended since its introduction in the 2014 season.

“It’s not just that a 12-team playoff is a good thing,” Saban said.