Nick Saban and Tim Tebow both took aim Saturday at the proposed move from a 12-team College Football Playoff to 24 teams, and both framed it as a change that would cost the sport something important. Saban said there are not 24 teams in the country that deserve to be in the playoff, while Tebow argued the expansion would reward teams that can peak late instead of those that stay sharp all season.
The comments landed on a busy college football Saturday, with two Top-10 matchups on the schedule: Ohio State vs Indiana and Notre Dame vs BYU. That is why the debate around the SEC standings and the broader playoff picture is drawing so much attention now. Fans are not just looking at rankings; they are trying to understand how a larger field would reshape what matters in November and beyond.
Saban, appearing on 's College GameDay on the campus of BYU, said the sport would lose something real if the bracket grows that far. “People want to see the best teams in the Playoffs,” he said. “There's not 24 teams in the country that deserve to be in the playoffs.” He added that he does not think 24 teams can win the championship, and said bowl games would become “a thing of the past.”
He also pointed to one of the clearest tradeoffs. “We're gaining something but we're also giving something up. There's gonna be no SEC Championship Game now,” Saban said. That is the heart of the argument against the proposal: more access for more teams, but less value attached to the regular season and the conference title race that has long helped sort out the best teams.
Tebow, speaking on the SEC Network, put the same concern in different terms. “We changed the goal posts,” he said. “Before it was about how consistent can you be throughout the season? Now it's can you just get in and get hot at the right time?” He said the change takes away consistency and gives teams weeks when they do not have to show up at full strength, which he said dilutes what made college football different.
“One of the biggest reasons why I don't like it, is because when you're looking at this game, there's a few things that separate us: It's the regular season,” Tebow said. He called the regular season “so critical” and “so important,” and said expansion would erase one of the sport's biggest differentiators from other college and pro leagues. Even so, the debate is not framed as pure loss; there are expected benefits in widening access. The unresolved question is whether that tradeoff is worth it, and whether the 24-team idea will actually become the next format rather than remain only a proposal.
