Nobody can deny that Nick Saban is a great coach, but he isn’t going to win any popularity contests especially with Alabama football‘s notorious FCS games.
Nick Saban has had enough of so-called “cupcake” games. The championship coach thinks such games should be eliminated from big teams’ schedules.
In an interview with George Schroeder of USA TODAY Sports Saban plainly states, “I think College Five (Power Five) conference teams should play all College Five conference teams. You know, and we should play more conference games.” And he doesn’t stop there.
Saban elaborates, solidifying his stance further:
"Then to me, losing two games wouldn’t knock you out of this, because you’d be playing more good teams. You can barely have a bad game in college football and survive it. And if you have it late in the season like we did it seems to have more significance in terms of how people feel about it than if you lose games earlier."
There are two problems with Saban’s idea. First, it would never give smaller teams the chance to share the spotlight–and the payday–with their marquee counterparts. Look, I know that Mercer wasn’t exactly a challenge for ‘Bama last year, but I bet you those kids loved the chance to play the Tide. When will athletes from smaller schools ever get a chance to play in front of a crowd of 100,000 again? Plus, now that gambling on football is legal, those games are going to carry a great deal more weight.
And honestly, Saban making a statement like that kind of belatedly proves UCF’s point; that is, if they were in a bigger conference, would they have been allowed to play for the CFP?
In addition, college football is never a sure thing. College football is all about the chaos, and upsets happen constantly. Think about it–nobody expected an unranked Pitt to come into Death Valley and beat Clemson, but they did.
That same season, third-ranked Michigan went down to an unranked Iowa team. (Incidentally, Iowa is pretty feisty–they also dropped Ohio State last year.) A loss to a non-power team can also show a team the weaknesses in their lineup and give them a chance to shore up their defenses before they play a team that matters to their conference rankings.
Next: 3 reasons cupcake games are good for college football
I do get what Saban is trying to say. He feels that the subjective nature of the CFP would be eliminated if the big-name teams exclusively played one another. But he has forgotten what makes college football so special. Nothing is assured in college football. Ever. Today’s cupcake team might be tomorrow’s champion–just ask UCF. So before you go off agreeing with Saban’s sneering, lofty declaration, remember that.