Nick Saban reacts to 24-team College Football Playoff format

Nick Saban reacted to ESPN reporting the college Football Playoff is expected to move to a 24-team format in 2027.

Saban is worried about the health of the players with more games expected to be played under the change.

“Well, first of all, I really didn’t retire because college football was changing,” Saban said on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “We always wanted to help players be more successful in life. That became a little more difficult with NIL and players getting paid, which I think they deserved, and I was happy for them to be able to do it. It just changed the whole game in terms of transfer portal guys, how much they’re getting paid, how does that affect their ability to work on the things they need to do to develop personally, academically, and athletically. I think those are all questions that we want to make sure that in college we keep education first and development first. And make the quality of life better and find a balance in all that and a competitive balance in all that. But the 24 team playoff is my only concern about the 24 team playoff is I understand the more teams you get involved, the more interest it creates and more opportunity, the more hope that it creates for players. But the one thing that I am concerned about, because we played 15 games three or four times . And that was a lot of games for college players. Now we’re talking about in a 24-team playoff, you could play five more games and the 12 games and what happens with championship games and how we eliminate those. And I just get a little concerned about how much is too much when it comes to how many games a college player plays.”

Saban went on to say he would be in favor of adding four teams to current 12-team playoff format.

“I would be for 16,” Saban said. “I think that would be a good compromise. I would be for keeping conference championship games as maybe a play-in to the 16, which now you’d have 20 teams that had hope. But I don’t think there’s much support for that. I don’t think anybody really likes that.”

The 12-team format remains in place for the 2026-2027 season.