College Sports Forum

College Sports Forum

College sports fan talk.

Nick Saban interview, discusses scheduling, extending playoff...

+6 HS
RunEddieRun1983's picture
July 27, 2017 at 8:34am
18 Comments

I was on my way into the gym this morning and listening to First and Last on ESPN radio, Mike Golic Jr. is the host.

For those not aware, it's not a bad little show, he's actually kind of clever from time to time, especially for four in the morning, it's decent listening.

He played snippets of an interview with Nick Saban this morning where he talks about scheduling, and it kind of made me laugh, because it was basically the safest statement I'd ever heard a coach of a powerhouse school like Alabama make.  It was like taking a stand/making a statement, but not really because you know ultimately the outcome of the statement is in the hands of those that pay your salary, and they can protect you from the statement.

I'll paraphrase, but essentially what he said was that, in terms of scheduling, if you're a power 5 school, you should only play power 5 schools during the regular season.  So where some schools (Alabama, we're looking at you) will pad their schedule with lesser Division 1-A schools, and some 1-AA schools, that shouldn't happen any longer, and all the power 5 teams should play each other.

Basically what would happen is the Purdues, Kansas', Rutgers, and Vanderbilts of the world would become the punching bags for the likes of Ohio State, Alabama, USC, Florida State, Clemson etc...

So the first thing I'd say is, yes it sucks to watch a big-time school play a school like Southern Methodist Presbyterian Appalacha Tech University State... The competitive balance isn't there and it does nothing to a team's SOS...  On the other hand, some of these schools count on those games with big programs to meet their budget every season...  So it's like, a good with the bad type of deal.

Secondly, I think it does no justice whatsoever to exclude conferences like the AAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt, MAC, and others that, on occasion, will turn out some competitive teams.  Most recently, Western Michigan had an undefeated season last year where they were supposed to be fodder for Northwestern, and Illinois, and they ended up winning those games and running through the MAC...  Those wins against power 5 schools (even if they were lower on the totem pole) were still statements made by a team that wasn't favored to win.

My take was, this is Saban making a safe statement, talking out of both sides of his mouth because he knows that Alabama will still play Nicholls State, and Southern Georgia, and teams like that once or twice a year, and every year before the Iron Bowl...  It will continue to happen, but he can say, "well it happens, but I don't agree with it," because he knows he'll never have to be the person responsible for the actual scheduling of Alabama's games.

I think if the NCAA wanted to go to a 1-A vs. 1-A only regular season and included the smaller 1-A conferences, but excluded the 1-AA teams, I'd be okay with it, but it would be unfortunate for the 1-AA teams who know they're going to get smoked, but count on that money to make sure they have a team the next year.

Saban did say one thing that I thought was interesting, though.  He brought up the fact that if you have power 5 teams only playing power 5 teams, then it would be more likely that a team could lose more than 1 game and still make the playoff...  And he felt like it would make the best case to extend the playoff and include more teams since there would be more competitive balance (theoretically).  I did tend to agree with that, but I still think you could expand the field, and go to a 1-A vs. 1-A only schedule format and still be able to have the best field of 6 or 8 teams in the playoff.

Thoughts fellow 11w'ers?

This is a forum post from a site member. It does not represent the views of Eleven Warriors unless otherwise noted.

View 18 Comments