Alabama's Nick Saban shares ideas on improving college football schedule

Alabama coach Nick Saban proposed a “far out” theory to change the regular-season schedule and College Football Playoff as a way to bolster the sport.

“We should play all teams in the Power 5 conferences," Saban told ESPN on Wednesday. “If we did that, then if we were going to have bowl games, we should do the bowl games just like we do in the NCAA basketball tournament — not by record but by some kind of power rating that gets you in a bowl game. If we did that, people would be a little less interested in maybe bowl games and more interested in expanding the playoff.”

Saban, who has guided the Crimson Tide to all three playoff semifinals since it began, said the six-win threshold for bowl eligibility “holds the game down.”

"You eliminate the six wins to get in a bowl game and now you can have a different kind of scheduling that is more fan interest, more good games, bring out the better quality team,” Saban said. “And whether you expand the playoff or have a system where it's like now — we take the top 12 teams and decide what bowl game they go to — just take them all. …In this scenario, there would be more opportunity to play more teams in your league, as well as to have more games that people would be interested in."

Saban echoed the sentiments of Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher, who said Tuesday the CFP committee has a “hard job because of only picking four teams” and that “there’s not enough games of interconference play to help judge how you’re rating each league.”

Florida State and Alabama open the college football season on Sept. 2 in Atlanta for a much-anticipated showdown.

“I would rather play Florida State,” Saban said of his scheduling preferences. “Not just Florida State but a good team in the beginning of the season because I think it does a lot for your team and your team's chances of being successful. First of all, you have a better offseason when the players have a big challenge in the first game. 

“And if you play a really weak team and you win the game 45-7, you still don't really know for sure if your team is really good or not good."

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