ATLANTA—If you walked away early from Nick Saban's televised press conference at SEC Media Days, falling into the legendary coach's ho-hum trap, you missed a gem of a closing rant.
For the first 12-plus minutes of Saban's Wednesday presser, the media horde at the College Football Hall of Fame was treated to vanilla responses involving the redshirt rule, the process behind hiring assistant coaches, the so-called 'quarterback controversy' between Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa (spoiler alert: no starter has been determined) and the mixed emotions with facing friendly head coaches within the SEC (Jimbo Fisher, Jeremy Pruitt, Kirby Smart).
Heck, someone even asked if Saban planned on joining Steve Spurrier as the only SEC coach in history to roam the sidelines beyond the age of 70.
Saban's terse, but humorous retort: "Miss Terry (Saban's wife) does not want me at home. I can tell you that. She doesn't care if I'm 60, 70 or 80.".
NOTE: Among famous people, Saban might be the youngest-looking 60-something male in America today. On the women's side, how about Christie Brinkley?)
But these random conversations were merely appetizers for closing Saban's truth bomb, when fielding the final query in the Hall of Fame's main room.
For the record, Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi asked a solid two-part question about scheduling and how future Group Of Five programs (similar to undefeated UCF last year) could someday qualify for the four-team College Football Playoff.
This prompted the usually reticent Saban (127-20 at Alabama; five conference titles; five national championships) to volunteer a plethora of personal feelings about the state of college football ... and how poor scheduling may be hurting the overall composition of college football.
Here's the full, unvarnished comment, and it's a doozy:
"Neutral-site games really launched our program in Alabama when we first came here years ago. But I think, philosophically, we're sort of changing our thoughts on that and our future scheduling and trying to get more home-and-homes, which leads me to talk about what we need to do scheduling-wise.
"I know nobody really asked this, but I've always been an advocate of playing all Power Five schools.
"I think we need to (have) more really, really good games on TV for the players. We can't have fans who pay a lot of money for tickets and (luxury) boxes and loges, who support our programs, to pay for games that no one is interested in watching.
"So that's ... now, I've heard (SEC commish Greg Sankey) talk about the fact that we don't want to play nine SEC games, but I've always been an advocate of playing nine or 10 SEC games and a couple other games against some other good opponents that everybody would be happy to watch.
"I think it would help us determine, to your next question, who should be in the playoffs. And you might not have to go undefeated to get into the playoffs, because there would be more games against high-quality opponents, which would help determine who the best teams are.
"And, look, I have tremendous amount of compassion for UCF (which defeated Auburn—the only team to beat Alabama last year) and what they accomplished (13-0). ... (The Crimson Tide have) only had one team that's gone undefeated and won the national championship; and that was in 2009, and that is very, very, very difficult to do, for anyone.
"... I have a tremendous amount of respect for the players. I'm not responsible for the system that determines who gets in the playoffs. But I think the (College Football Playoff committee) did a good job of determining who got in the playoffs, and we can have another discussion about the future of the playoffs and how many teams should get in the playoffs, but you're going to minimize the effect of bowl games, which I stood up here 10 years ago and said, 'As soon as we do this, it's going to diminish bowl games, the importance of bowl games. Everybody would just be interested in the playoffs.'
"Well, that's where we are right now. I mean, we have (imminent NFL prospects) choosing not to play in bowl games because it's not important because they're going to save themselves for the draft. All of these things are not good for college football."
INSIDE THE SEC
On Monday, commissioner Sankey said the conference doesn't anticipate any substantive changes to its eight-game model for league games.
As such, the SEC wouldn't be joining the Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12 as Power 5 conferences which subscribe to a nine-game model for league play.
As a counter to the above discrepancy, Sankey spins back to the conference mandating a 'colleague conference' outing (with the Pac-12, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten) for every SEC member, and how this should be enough to satisfy the nation's scheduling critics.
On some level, Sankey's correct about Florida, Kentucky, Georgia and South Carolina having tough matchups with Florida State, Louisville, Georgia Tech and Clemson, respectively, automatically baked into every season.
But what about the SEC's other 10 teams?
Since Texas A&M and Missouri joined the conference in 2012, the SEC has supported a 6-1-1 method for league scheduling:
**Round-robin play inside the division (six games)
**One permanent crossover opponent (Alabama-Tennessee, Auburn-UGA, LSU-Florida, etc.)
**One rotating crossover opponent each year
The final component could be a bone of contention among SEC fans and media.
In the celebrated case of Saban, it's clearly a hot-button topic.
THE PROOF'S IN THE NEUTRAL-FIELD PUDDING
When Saban assumed control of Alabama in 2007, the Crimson Tide had a respectable non-conference slate of Florida State (loss), Houston (win), Louisiana-Monroe (loss) and Western Carolina (win).
Last year, the Crimson Tide mowed down Florida State (then ranked No. 3 in the country), Fresno State, Colorado State and Mercer for non-league outings. Once again, it's certainly a better-than-average attempt at scheduling around the SEC gauntlet.
(UGA, for example, has Austin Peay, UMass, Middle Tennessee and Georgia Tech outside the SEC.)
And don't forget about the 2012-16 campaigns, when Alabama demolished the likes of Michigan, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Wisconsin and USC on Opening Weekend—with an average victory margin of 30.2 points.
The above stat blows my mind, even if none of the five runaways occurred in the opponents' home stadium. As such, on the scheduling front, Saban (six total national championships—tied with Paul 'Bear' Bryant) doesn't pay lip service to the subject in public ... and then carry out a different mission privately.
And yet, some harsh words are being said on social media. College fans, presumably from other power leagues, apparently have a problem with Saban residing in a place which offers only eight conference games per season.
The downside of mocking Saban's methods: If Alabama suddenly had an incentivized green light to take its future schedules to unprecedented heights, opting to play Power 5 conferences at every turn, it would create fresh motivation for Saban to destroy forgotten foes.
Namely, adding Texas, UCLA, Iowa, Notre Dame or Miami to the mix. These heralded programs haven't incurred the Crimson Tide's regular-season wrath since the so-so days of Mike Shula, Dennis Franchione and Mike DuBose.
No pun intended here: So, why poke that bear?
