Once upon a time, Nick Saban was 0-1 on Chickenshit Saturday.
It happened in his first season at Alabama, when the Crimson Tide fell to Louisiana-Monroe 21-14 in Tuscaloosa on the second-to-last Saturday of the season. That game - that Saturday, across the conference - was scheduled in advance and in perpetuity for all Southeastern Conference teams.
SoCon Saturday, informally known as Chickenshit Saturday, existed for one reason: ensuring no SEC contender accidentally detonated its title hopes a week before rivalry Saturday.
Alas, it has lost its utility in the current era. Yesterday the SEC announced that it would be sunsetting its annual Opportunistic Late Season Bye Week tradition beginning with the 2027 schedule.
With the biggest opponent of the season looming in the finale, losing on the penultimate Saturday - which has all the ripe conditions for a Trap Game - would be disastrous. Buckeye fans know this reality more intimately than we'd like.
Back in 2007, Ohio State was undefeated and ranked no.1 in the country and lost on Senior Day to unranked Illinois the week before it traveled to Ann Arbor. The Buckeyes still made it to the BCS title game while Illinois landed in Pasadena - but that's because the 2007 college football season will forever be without peer when it comes to bizarro witchcraft turbofuckery. Ohio State failed up into the overall no.1 seed.
Michigan kicked off that season by losing to Appalachian State, Saban lost to Louisiana Monroe and Ohio State ended its regular season ranked no.7 but went to the BCS title game as the home team because every other contender forgot how to win for the final two weeks of the schedule. That's the wild outlier and exception, but it's too fun to ignore.
The SEC marketed ITS CONFERENCE SCHEDULE as an unforgiving weekly knife fight while simultaneously wrapping its contenders in industrial-grade bubble wrap AS the rest of the country was playing elimination games.
Saban's embarrassing loss to the Warhawks (I had to look it up) was the third in four games for him, and through yet another miracle of 2007 still counts in the NCAA record book. Five of his first seven wins in Tuscaloosa were vacated due to wrist-slap NCAA sanctions stemming from improper benefits involving textbooks.
This was a decoy that could be seen from space. NIL stripped away much of the theater and clarified what everyone already understood: the SEC operated under a different set of rules during its championship boom.
Compensating players and their families at levels unseen around the rest of the country - under the table, wink wink wink - was the quiet part. Conversely, Chickenshit Saturday was uproariously loud.
Back in 2007, Louisiana-Monroe did not understand the assignment. Maybe it was because Saban had inherited a clunker from Mike Shula that not even WR coach/recruiting coordinator Curt Cignetti could rehabilitate quickly. Perhaps it was 2007 blessing us with the most comically enjoyable season any sport has ever had.
But it would be the final time Chickenshit caused any sort of meaningful damage to one of The Brands.
As long as only two teams could qualify for national title contention, no SEC contender would voluntarily expose itself to late-November volatility when an FCS paycheck game could function as a bye week, tune-up and injury shield before rivalry weekend.
And so Chickenshit Saturday was established as institutional doctrine down south. Every November, SEC fans and media honks would spend months thundering about surviving the sport's toughest gauntlet before quietly scheduling Chattanooga, Mercer, The Citadel or Western Carolina directly before Alabama-Auburn, the Egg Bowl or Clean Old-Fashioned Hate.
Nov 22, 2025; College Station, Texas, USA; Samford Bulldogs quarterback Quincy Crittendon (2) is sacked by Texas A&M Aggies defensive end Marco Jones (10) in the second half of a game at Kyle Field. Mandatory Credit: Joseph Buvid-Imagn Images
It was equal parts gamesmanship and infomercial. The conference marketed itself as an unforgiving weekly knife fight while simultaneously wrapping its contenders in industrial-grade bubble wrap on a weekend when the rest of the country was playing elimination games.
And honestly? Under the old system, it worked. Ohio State had to survive Iowa for what was the de facto B1G title game the week before The Game in 2009, going to overtime and winning on a walk-off field goal. Wow, remember those? Ohio State special teams used to be special.
The Buckeyes got the Nittany Lions the week before Michigan in 2011 and then again in 2019 when both teams were ranked in the top 10. In 2012, undefeated Ohio State visited Madison the week before playing the Wolverines. The Spartans walked-off the Buckeyes in Columbus in 2015. The next game on the schedule was the last one.
Those opponents, combined with several years of pre-Cignetti Indiana and a Maryland here or there are just too random, and express just how little the conference gamed the schedules for its most capable title contenders.
None of this made the Big Ten noble. It mostly revealed how little late-stage Jim Delany-era leadership optimized for national titles while clinging to Rose Bowl romanticism.
Down south, titles were all that mattered. The four-team playoff and the BCS had turned late November into pure risk management. One bad Saturday could vaporize an entire season. Style points and poll inertia governed everything. A quarterback spraining his ankle against Arkansas or Vanderbilt in the 2nd half could not be tolerated.
The SEC simply identified an inefficiency and exploited it more aggressively than everyone else. That's what made Chickenshit Saturday so infuriating to everyone else. Not because it violated any rules, but because it played into them perfectly.
Ohio State was playing conference crown contenders. Prior to the B1Ggification of the Pacific Time Zone, Oregon was playing USC. Big 12 teams were busy setting their defenses on fire against one another every weekend while Alabama got Mercer and Mississippi State booked Tennessee-Martin, which sounds less like a football opponent and more like a law firm specializing in boating accidents.
No one did more for affordable late November football tickets than the American South. Entire stadium sections sat empty for these ceremonial executions as the regular season was cresting everywhere else in the country.
I mean, its pretty much another bye week: pic.twitter.com/WnFR3BOQte
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanDFischer) October 29, 2015
The SEC's defense of this was always circular theater:
- Chickenshit Saturday did not create any advantage
- HOWEVER, it absolutely had to remain on the schedule
- Anyone criticizing it was free to engage in opportunistic chickenshittery themselves
Michigan honks adopted a similar position defending Conner Stalions and the entire football operation participating in advanced scouting. Everyone does it, the program invested heavily in it for years and it was the most conspicuous sideline element of our play calling during an amazing three-year turnaround unlike any of the previous 25 seasons - but how dare anyone suggest it created an advantage.
There is a lot of justified consternation around the rapid expansion of the College Football Playoff, which has less to do with crowning a national champion as it does maximizing conference inventory while satisfying broadcast partners.
No one in Birmingham SUDDENLY discovered shame or competitive purity. College football did not suddenly locate its conscience beneath a pile of booster receipts and Dodge Charger leases.
It's why the SEC would be perfectly happy capping the dance at 16 teams, since the four extra tacked onto the current dozen would likely come from its own middle class. While the top of the B1G is nationally elite, its midsection is squishier. Expanding to 24 would create a wider berth for its own programs, and could also get Fox into the fold.
No one cares about the sanctity of the sport or preserving the best regular season in the history of anything America has televised or hosted pre-television era. They just like checks with a lot of commas in them. Conferences and broadcast partners care about their shareholders and stakeholders. It's not a B1G thing, even if they're the ones pining for an extremely diluted 24 teams in the postseason tournament.
And the proof of that is the SEC, now protesting rapid expansion after spending two decades scheduling church league teams to protect its own interests. Chickenshit Saturday now has all the utility of a buggy whip at the onset of the automobile era, which is the only reason the SEC is now killing it.
No one in Birmingham discovered shame or competitive purity. College football did not suddenly locate its conscience beneath a pile of booster receipts and Dodge Charger leases. Chickenshit Saturday is disappearing because the expanded playoff changed the math.
Two losses no longer end seasons. Soon, maybe not even three. The incentive to eliminate every ounce of late-season risk no longer outweighs the ridicule, television boredom and résumé dilution that come with paying an overmatched FCS team to absorb a televised beating between ranked matchups.
The spiders and landmines have been fumigated and swept. The bluebloods now operate with multiple escape hatches while everybody else fights over the final invitations.
Turns out once two dozen teams get postseason lifeboats, nobody needs Charleston Southern in November anymore. So rest in little pieces, Chickenshit Saturday. You can go back to only fertilizing crops now.
