What does Nick Saban think of the 12-team College Football Playoff?

Nick Saban told Theo Von that fans want to see the best 12 teams, and that reaching a 12-team format required including schools outside the power conferences. He wants better strength-of-schedule metrics, noting it was wrong that Notre Dame missed the playoff and would have been wrong to leave out Miami, which reached the final and nearly beat Indiana. He says a larger playoff has made bowl games obsolete, as he predicted, and worries about players facing as many as 17 games.

• Saban cites Texas, who lost 14-7 to Ohio State and finished 9-3, as proof the schedule metrics fall short.
• Saban suggests a basketball-style system that awards points for beating top-10 and top-30 teams.
• Saban says 33 coaches were fired last year because reaching the playoff became the standard.

▸In their words

“we're going to make bowl games obsolete.” Nick Saban · at 1:00:26 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von (2026-10-06). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode