Saban pivotal in making scheduling better
Alabama coach Nick Saban still is stumping for more competitive college football schedules. More importantly, Bama is doing something about it.
The Crimson Tide and Wisconsin on Monday announced a home-andhome series for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, playing in Madison, Wisconsin, in '24 and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in '25.
“We are excited to add another high-caliber, nonconference game to our future schedule,” Saban said in a Bama press release. “We played a great game with Wisconsin in Arlington (Texas) a few years back, and this homeand-home series will be a tremendous opportunity for our programs to play in two of the best atmospheres in college football. Matchups like this are so important to the health of college football, because it provides fans exciting matchups and players new challenges.”
Saban has been encouraging the Southeastern Conference to go to tougher scheduling— expanding to nine conference games, playing more nonconference games against fellow Power 5 conferences— and others have joined that crusade as well. Particularly Georgia.
Alabama, which for most of this decade has played only one Power 5 nonconference opponent and that on a neutral field in a season opener, has scheduled home-and-home series with Texas in 2022-23, West Virginia in 2026-27, Notre Dame in 2028-29 and Oklahoma in 2032-33.
But this season, Alabama opens against Duke in Atlanta.
On ESPN's Golic and Wingo Show last week, Saban again campaigned for tougher scheduling.
“I think the culture of college football would
benefit if we said Power 5 teams have to play all Power 5 teams,” Saban said. “I've been an advocate of this for several years. I've been an advocate of playing more SEC games.
“I think you should do it like basketball. They have RPI, or whatever it is, in basketball that says these are the teams that played the best schedule and won the biggest games. So that's how you qualify for a bowl game, not how many games you win.”
Saban also said Bama has been playing neutral site openers because “that's the only way we could get a quality opponent. And if you are in a conference where your natural rivalry is out of your conference, like Georgia plays Georgia Tech every year. So they have to get one more game and they've got 10 Power 5 schools.
“Our two natural rivalries are in our league, so we don't have one of those, so we have to get two teams to play us every year and we've done a pretty good job of that for the most part. People look at this year's schedule and say, `Why are they not playing more out-of-conference schools that are more highly ranked?' Well, we tried, is all I can tell you. We tried and we try every year.”
Maybe Saban is right. Maybe teams won't play Alabama home-andhome. I have no idea if Bama has engaged Kansas State or Arizona State or Iowa. Shame on any competitive school that won't take on the challenge. If the Crimson Tide is willing to play in Pullman, Washington, or West Lafayette, Indiana, or Chapel Hill, North Carolina, sign the contract and give those fans a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Saban is right. That would be good for college football.
All kinds of factions are conspiring to increase the quality of scheduling. Television networks lead that charge, followed closely by the Big 12, Pac-12 and Big Ten, which play nine-game conference schedules, as opposed to the eight-game models of the ACC and SEC. And now the flagship schools of the ACC and SEC— Alabama, Georgia, Clemson and Florida State— have either upgraded their schedules or continue to play quality nonconference schools.
The discrepancy in scheduling was most pronounced in the 2017 College Football Playoff selections when 11-1 Alabama was selected over 11-2 Southern Cal, though Bama played just nine Power 5 opponents and USC played 12.
Some have petitioned for all Power 5 schools to play at least 10 of their 12 games against fellow Power 5 opponents.
“It's not completely out of my hand because
I sit on the Management Committee of the CFP (football playoff), and I suppose it's something we could take up,” said Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “But early on in the process, we determined that we were going to leave conference scheduling to the autonomy of those conferences and they would have the opportunity to decide their champion in the manner in which they want to decide it.
“If it were left entirely up to me, I wouldn't make any stipulations about how many games you have to play to decide your conference championship, I would advocate for a policy that says everybody plays 10 autonomy (Power 5) games and you can play eight conference games or seven or nine, whatever you want to do. But everybody has to play 10 autonomy games and that way the portfolio looks relatively the same.
“We all know there is a fair amount of variance from the top to the bottom … even that's not ideal. But that's what I would advocate for.”
And of course, while Alabama waits on most of the rest of the SEC to upgrade scheduling, the Crimson Tide could be like Georgia and schedule even better. The Bulldogs have some years in the future with 11 Power 5 opponents.
But give Saban credit. He's been consistent in politicking for better scheduling, and Alabama pulls a lot of weight.