Alabama coach Nick Saban looks on. Photo Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Nick Saban has been in favor of College Football Playoff expansion for quite some time, but the Alabama coach believes the new format will have one significant consequence when it takes effect next season.
Saban, who has been preparing No. 4 Alabama to take on No. 1 Michigan in the College Football Playoff semifinal, said on Monday that the downside of expanding the CFP to 12 teams will be that other bowl games will be minimized.
“One of the great traditions of college football for many years was if you had a great season, you got to go to a bowl game,” Saban said. “It’s great for the players. They got a lot of positive reinforcement. Maybe you didn’t win a championship but you had a good team. It was great for the fan base. As soon as we started having playoffs, this is new and I’m not complaining about that, it started to minimize the importance of bowl games. The more we expand the playoffs, which I’m not against, I’m for, it minimizes the importance of bowl games.”
Nick Saban said w/playoff expanding “the more it minimizes bowl games. One of the great traditions of college football for many years was if you had a great season, you got to go to a bowl game. It's great for the players. They got a lot of positive reinforcement. Maybe you…
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) January 1, 2024
Saban is right. Bowl games have been diminished for years now. One of the main reasons for that is that a lot of star players would rather not risk injury playing in a bowl game if they are not competing for a national championship. The end result has been stripped-down rosters and teams that are missing key players, which hurts the product on the field.
This is not the first time Saban has expressed concern about the College Football Playoff. The question, of course, is whether the positive impact of a bigger playoff outweighs the negative impact of minimized bowl games. Many people feel that it will.
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