In case you missed it earlier this week, Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban called for teams in the Power 5 Conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC) to play 10 games on their schedule against Power 5 Conference schools.
This has been a topic Saban brought up at the SEC Media Days last season, so another year of the greatest coach in the history of college football making a valid argument might finally mean headway can come about.
Saban coaches the best school in the country in the strongest conference in the country. Sure, you get party crashers like Oklahoma and Ohio State in the playoff every year...well, at least Oklahoma deserved to be there the last two seasons. (Yes, that was my obligatory shot at Overrated State whenever college football is discussed on this blog...deal with it.)
However, the Big 12 is not deep enough and the Big 10 is like being a 25-year-old high school senior...everyone respects you but knows you are only at the table because of your legacy or name recognition.
If all teams were on a 12-game regular season schedule this idea of Saban's can work brilliantly. You would have your 8-9 conference games, with still room for 1-2 more against other Power 5 schools, a non-conference game against a Group of Five school and still room for a charitable donation to a Division I-AA school of your choosing.
Or in the case of that team from Columbus, their non-conference slate is a "Little Sisters of the Poor" donation every year. (That's two…)
We all know how dangerous the college football season is on any given weekend. A loss late in the season drops you right out of the playoff picture and can even ruin your chances of making your own conference championship game. Alabama has been clipped by LSU, Georgia and Auburn in recent years, but was strong enough to make the Final Four each of the first five years of the current system.
We can talk about expanding to 6, 8, 16 or 32 teams for five months out of the year. Still, Saban and Dabo Swinney at Clemson head the measuring stick programs the rest of the country hopes they can stay with for at least a half if given the opportunity.
The ACC is not on the level of the SEC right now, but the gap is closing.
In the long run is it really going to hurt the sport that Oregon or Michigan or Florida or Pitt might lose that one extra game on the schedule where they can put up 70-plus points against a team whose stadium capacity is over half of yours? The simple answer is that it will not. It certainly makes it harder for the 2017 Central Florida's, the 2012 Northern Illinois' and the every-year Boise State's to have a legitimate shot to play for the title.
Saban has six titles, while Swinney has two of the last three. For Saban to break Bear Bryant's record this sort of idea and/or change may be the most lasting part of his legacy. We know Saban does not have many more coaching years left ahead of him, leaving Swinney to pick up the ball and run with it at Clemson.
If guys like Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma or Chris Petersen at Washington get their programs a ring, they should be sending Saban one as a courtesy gesture for this proposal...even if it never comes to fruition.
After all, their programs will likely have gone through Saban, Swinney or both to earn that ring.
-JC24