Nick Saban says the upcoming 24-team College Football Playoff will include 'too many' teams

Nick Saban's current employer will be televising most of the games in the expanded 24-team College Football Playoff next season. But that doesn't mean the former Alabama coach is a fan of the idea to make the playoff bigger.

The former Alabama coach and current ESPN analyst joined Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce on their "New Heights" podcast released Friday and made it clear that he believed the new playoff was too large.

"Too many, there's not 24 teams in the country that can win the national championship," Saban said when Travis Kelce asked him about the expansion. "So what is the reason to actually do it?"

"Money," Jason Kelce, also an ESPN analyst, responded.

"You got it," Saban replied. He continued.

"But what you're giving up, which is what I hate to see is the SEC championship game, playing in the SEC championship was a big thing to our players, it was a big thing to our fans, it was a tradition, and it was a great venue. There's only two teams that can play in the national championship, but more teams can play in those kind of championship games, and there's a lot of pride in winning the conference championship."

Conference championship games are largely expected to go by the wayside as a product of the 24-team playoff implemented next season. Friday afternoon, the CFP issued a statement saying that "a formal agreement between the CFP and ESPN regarding future media rights in connection with potential expansion is in the final stages of review by the CFP."

As part of a bigger playoff, teams in the Big Ten will be required to play a non-conference game against a power conference opponent. The SEC already has that rule in place as it went to a nine-game schedule in 2026 to match the other three power conferences.

If conference championship games existed, a team could play 18 games if it made the national title game in the 24-team field. Dropping the title games will give the playoff room to start earlier and max the number of potential games for any one team at 17.

"If we just put the right 12 teams in and didn't go through all the political BS that we went through so we could have a 12-team playoff, and ended up putting a couple teams in that shouldn't be in and then some other teams that should have been in didn't get in, that was a good tournament," Saban said. "And maybe you go to 16 if you want to include some other people, but 24's a lot, it's too many games for college football players to play. We played 15 games, I think three times, and I thought that was too many games for college players to play."