Alabama Football: Nick Saban Wise to Denounce Auto-Bids for Conference Champs

By all accounts, we are headed full-steam ahead towards a college football postseason overhaul, and a Plus-1 seems to be likely result. Now the specifics must be ironed out.  

One of the hot topics recently has been the idea of mandating that the four teams in the FBS postseason be conference champions. Alabama head coach Nick Saban isn't a fan of automatic bids for conference champions, and he's wise to denounce the idea.

Saban was a speaker at Jason Foundation in Nashville, Tenn. on Tuesday, and gave his thoughts on automatic bids to OutKickTheCoverage.com. 

Among Saban's key points was this quote:

"

I don't think there's a parity in college football like there is in the NFL, where you can make a statement like that. No disrespect to any conference, but there are conferences that are in the BCS that if they played in the SEC their champion may be in fourth or fifth place. So because there's not a parity, I don't think it's fair to make a statement like that.

"

Hammer, meet nail.

Saban is absolutely right, college football isn't the NFL—and that's something to cherish. It'd be reckless to just assume that, since Team X won its arbitrarily-determined conference title, that it's worthy of a shot national championship.  

Use 2011 as an example. If we took the top four conference champions from BCS conferences and put them into a Plus-1, we would have had No.1 LSU facing No. 10 Wisconsin and No. 3 Oklahoma State facing No. 5 Oregon. No. 2 Alabama wouldn't be invited. Neither would No. 4 Stanford. On what planet does that make sense? Not this one.

College football doesn't need to be the NFL. Never in the history of the BCS have more than four teams had a legitimate gripe at claiming the national title. Let's not make matters worse by picking and choosing worthy teams simply because they won their conference title.  

The goal of postseason reform should be to maintain the integrity of the regular season—where every game matters, while still crowning a "true champion on the field." If we mandate automatic bids for conference champions, we lose sight of this goal, and give in to power-wielding commissioners that are only looking out for their best interest.

Take the top four in the BCS, play them off and crown a champion. It's the only answer to playoff reform, and it's as far as college football should ever go.