Nick Saban spent decades hoarding every five-star defensive lineman on the planet so nobody outside three zip codes could touch a trophy, and now the greatest dynasty builder in college football history is crying on a podcast because the sport wants to invite 24 teams to the dance.
On Friday’s episode of the New Heights podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce, the Hall of Fame former Alabama coach and current ESPN College GameDay analyst went scorched-earth on the College Football Playoff’s pending expansion to 24 teams for the 2027 season. “It’s too many… there’s not 24 teams in the country that can win a National Championship,” Saban said, via On3. “So, what is the reason to actually do it? It’s about the money. What you’re giving up, which I hate to see… the SEC Championship Game.”
I love how the architectural mastermind of modern roster monopolies suddenly sounds like a romantically misty-eyed traditionalist the second the velvet rope gets unhooked. Saban is dead right that only a handful of rosters have the two-deep defensive line talent to survive four straight January fistfights, yet he is completely missing why the 24-team model is about to print money and save regular-season Saturday nights from November apathy.
Saban’s $100 Million SEC Tears Ignore the Real Math
Let’s look at the actual ledger Saban is defending. On the podcast, he mourned the conference title game stage: “Playing in the SEC Championship was a big thing for our players and our fans. It was a tradition and it was a great venue. There’s only two teams who can play in a National Championship, but more teams can play in [conference] championship games.”
Saban himself argued on New Heights that he doubts expansion will generate substantially more net revenue once you subtract lost conference championship checks, with CBS Sports estimating the SEC Championship Game alone is worth around $100 million and On3 noting conferences want $200 million to $250 million combined to offset killing their title games. Here is the cold financial reality that blows up Saban’s nostalgia: ESPN is reportedly putting an extra $300 million to $345 million per year on the table on top of its existing $7.8 billion deal to lock in the 24-team bracket starting in 2027. Even after making the SEC and Big Ten whole for ditching neutral-site conference title games, the sport still stands to come out ahead in fresh television inventory while trading a corporate dome exhibition for a slate of on-campus bloodbaths.
Look at the proposed bracket mechanics. Under the structure being widely reported, the top eight seeds earn first-round byes while seeds 9 through 24 clash on campus in round one, followed by a second round also hosted on campus by the higher seeds. Instead of watching two locked-in playoff giants rest half their starters in Atlanta on the first weekend of December to avoid tearing an ACL before the real bracket starts, college football gets 16 sudden-death campus playoff games across two weekends where losing actually sends you home.
The 17-Game Snap Count Problem Is where Saban Actually Cooks
Where Saban stops glazing the old SEC hierarchy and lands a legitimate haymaker is the physical toll on 20-year-old bodies. As he put it on New Heights, via On3: “[The SEC Championship] was a great game, and players loved that. We’re gonna give that up to have an extra game where the 24th team is going to play the ninth best team.” He followed that by pointing directly at the snap-count ceiling: “Maybe you go to 16 if you want to include some other people, but 24 is a lot. It’s too many games for college football players to play. We played 15 games three times, and I thought that was too many games.”
My issue with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and the pro-expansion camp pushing for 19 at-large bids alongside the four Power Four champions and one Group of Six champion is that they treat college depth charts like 53-man NFL rosters with waiver wires. If the ninth seed runs the table from the opening on-campus round all the way to the national title game in January, that roster has to survive five playoff games on top of a 12-game regular season… a 17-game meat grinder with zero midseason free agency to replace blown-out knees in the trenches.
That workload math is why the top eight byes will become the most cutthroat tactical prize in American sports. A program that slips from No. 8 to No. 9 in the final November rankings loses its bye, plays an extra home playoff game against a desperate No. 24 seed with house-money aggression, and walks into a second-round campus road trip with an extra game’s worth of wear on its offensive line’s legs. Saban thinks 9-versus-24 ruins the regular season, when in reality the terror of falling out of the top eight turns every late-November rivalry game into a survival test for a bye week.
With the CFP confirming Friday that its formal agreement with ESPN is in the final stages of review, the commissioners are poised to cash a much bigger check that turns every 9-3 blueblood coach who misses a 24-team bracket into an immediate firing candidate before the portal even opens.
