Nick Saban Delivers Warning to Coaches Ahead of 24-Team College Football Playoff

Saban said on College GameDay that a 24-team field lowers the bar while raising fan expectations, and he questioned whether 17 games is too many.

ESPN personality Nick Saban during the 2026 Fiesta Bowl and the semifinal game of the College Football Playoff | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban used Saturday’s College GameDay to warn college football coaches that the coming 24-team College Football Playoff won’t protect their jobs and could put more of them on the hot seat.

A bigger field will “create an expectation that if you don’t get in the playoffs, they’re going to fire your ass,” Saban said on the set in Provo, Utah, where the show previewed No. 2 Notre Dame at No. 8 BYU.

His comments came one day after the playoff reached a handshake agreement with ESPN to broadcast a 24-team field beginning in 2027. ESPN will pay an average of $345 million more per year over five years for the larger bracket, which still needs final approval.

Why does Saban expect more firings?

The College Football Playoff logo is painted in the endzone prior to the Cotton Bowl between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Miami Hurricanes | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Saban’s case is that expansion cuts both ways. Doubling the field lowers the bar for entry, but he said it will also “raise the expectations of the fans to get into the playoffs.”

He acknowledged that “lots of coaches think” a bigger bracket means job security. Still, the new format strips away the cover a coach once had after a decent season. With 19 at-large spots joining the four Power Four champions and the top-ranked Group of Six champion, an 8-4 team could hang a playoff banner next year. So missing a 24-team field will be much harder to explain to athletic directors and boosters than missing a 12-team one.

That pressure already shows up in this season’s race, where Florida State coach Mike Norvell faces questions about his future before Saturday night’s trip to No. 3 Miami.

Saban’s player workload concerns

ESPN personality Pat McAfee speaks during College GameDay with Nick Saban | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

ESPN’s Pat McAfee set up the exchange by asking why the sport needed another jump after going “from two to four, four to 12, now 12 to 24.”

Saban answered that better schedules don’t require a bigger bracket. “You don’t need a 24-team playoff to have a nine-plus-one,” he said. “They did that in the SEC. They should have done it in all the conferences so we have better games and people play a more equal schedule.”

The SEC moved to nine league games this season and requires each member to schedule an additional power-conference opponent or Notre Dame.

Saban’s bigger worry is volume. He said his Alabama teams played 15 games “maybe three times, and I thought that was too many.” Under the new format, a team seeded ninth or lower that reaches the national championship game would play 17 games, adding five postseason contests to a 12-game regular season. That’s why he floated a 16-team field on Friday, with conference title games serving as play-ins.

How will the 24-team playoff work?

LSU Tigers quarterback Joe Burrow (9) fills out a bracket after the 2019 Peach Bowl college football playoff semifinal game between the LSU Tigers and the Oklahoma Sooners | USA TODAY Sports

Seeds 1 through 8 would receive byes followed by home games, while seeds 9 through 16 would host first-round games against seeds 17 through 24. Power Four conference championship games would be eliminated, and the regular season would open a week earlier.

The quarterfinals and semifinals would stay in the New Year’s Six bowls, with the national championship game remaining in January. This season’s 12-team bracket would be the last of that size if the deal is finalized.