Nick Saban, Kirk Herbstreit Call for Major Change to Weekly College Football Playoff Rankings

“You put yourself in a box.”

Kirk Herbstreit and Nick Saban addressed the controversial weekly ranking show on ‘College GameDay’ ahead of the SEC championship. / ESPN via Awful Announcing on X

From his role as College GameDay analyst, legendary former coach Nick Saban has issued a number of changes he’d like to see to the sport. In light of Lane Kiffin’s departure from Ole Miss in the heat of a College Football Playoff run to take the job at LSU, he’d like to see an NFL-style adjustment to the coaching carousel calendar. To implement major reforms like that, he’d like to see a commissioner take over leadership of the sport (though he’s maintained that he doesn’t want that job).

During Saturday’s edition of GameDay, which broadcast from Atlanta ahead of Saban’s old program Alabama facing off against his longtime assistant Kirby Smart and Georgia, he and colleague Kirk Herbstreit put forward another change to the sport: the cancelation of the weekly CFP rankings show that airs on ESPN each Tuesday night beginning in early November.

The show gives insight into the selection committee’s thoughts on where teams stand, but the answers delivered by the committee chair after the release each week are virtually never satisfying.

This year’s most heated weekly debate has centered on Notre Dame and Miami; the two schools have the same record and similar résumés, and yet the Fighting Irish have ranked ahead of the Hurricanes every week, despite Miami’s Week 1 head-to-head win between the two sides. This past Tuesday, the committee dropped Notre Dame below Alabama, despite the Irish blowing out Stanford and the Crimson Tide surviving an upset bid against a sub-.500 Auburn without a full-time head coach, setting up the possibility that Miami and Notre Dame will be compared directly for the final at-large bid with BYU’s loss Saturday. The Cougars were the sole team ranked between the two this week.

Ahead of Sunday’s official rankings release, Saban and Herbstreit went in on the show, arguing that it causes more trouble than its worth.

Kirk Herbstreit and Nick Saban are both ready to dump the weekly CFP rankings.

"Honestly I think we should remove, with all due respect, the Tuesday night show." pic.twitter.com/7xMOmpm1ZX

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 6, 2025

“Honestly I think we should remove, with all due respect, the Tuesday night show,” Herbstreit said. “Because truly, until all the data is in—conference championships, head-to-head—then you can look at this fairly. But to look at this week-by-week, I think this sets us up for things like, well that doesn’t make sense, you’ve had Notre Dame ahead of these guys all week, they didn’t even play, how are you going to flip Miami now?

“It’s really not supposed to be the real rankings until the season is over.”

Saban concurred, saying, “I agree with you, because you put yourself in a box.”

GameDay’s Desmond Howard said that he believes the committee will ultimately put Miami in ahead of Notre Dame if the debate comes down to the two, which Herbstreit agreed with. “Stanford Steve” Coughlin said he finds it “hard to believe” given the penultimate rankings.

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Of course, the biggest winner of the CFP rankings show might be Saban and Herbstreit’s employer, ESPN

They don’t need to look past the network that cuts their checks for why the show airs each Tuesday. The weekly rankings help drive significant conversation and debate, and the yearly controversies—going all the way back to the very first CFP in 2014, when Ohio State jumped TCU and Baylor for the No. 4 seed, to last year’s final at-large debate between SMU, Alabama, Miami and South Carolina—are probably good for attention on the sport.

Even so, it is hard to argue against their rationale. Only the final rankings matter, and the committee is setting itself up for the heat it receives by releasing week-by-week Top 25 rankings with incomplete sets of data.

We’ll find out the fates of Notre Dame, Miami and the rest of the teams in the playoff mix on Sunday at 12 p.m. ET. On ESPN, of course.

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