Nick Saban on realignment: My biggest concern is competitive balance

Realignment has dominated the college sports conversation since USC and UCLA’s move to the Big Ten. Every team has had to reevaluate their position and their conference standing after those decisions. It’s also warming fans up to the reality that things will not be the same moving forward. Alabama head coach Nick Saban says where we’re headed is the new normal, even if it hurts the sport for the sake of money.

Saban spoke to Greg McElroy on ‘Always College Football‘ about the impact of realignment. He says that the loss of college football heritage is nothing new when it comes to conference changes.

“With realignment, there’s a lot of tradition in conferences that will no longer exist. I think we’ve gone through that to some degree in the past,” said Saban. “The Oklahoma–Nebraska game used to be a big game and they’ve not been in the same conference for quite some time now. I think mega conferences are probably here to stay.”

Nick Saban’s biggest issue with the realignments is the parity on the field moving forward. The natural response to the conference changes is that some programs will get left behind if they’re not in a super conference. That off-balance effect would trickle down away from the field as well. Saban wants to see college football keep the focus on what’s most important, which is keeping more teams in the hunt for more of the season.

“My biggest concern is competitive balance. In the NFL, every rule that they have is to create competitive balance…We don’t have any guard rails on what we’re doing right now. We have no restrictions on who can do what,” Saban said. “Some people are not going to be capable. The bottom line is we’ll lose some competitive balance, which everything we’ve always done is college football is to maintain (that). Same scholarships, everybody had to play by the same rules whether it was recruiting or (other). Right now, that’s not how it is.”

Members of the SEC and Big Ten are naturally going to pull away if the conferences stay on the path they’re on. The separation of those two conferences is going to leave other teams and conferences behind. This will consequently create a dichotomy that will force teams to decide where they fall. In the end, Nick Saban says it’s going to deplete the product on the field altogether.

“If that’s the case, you’re going to create more haves and more have nots. Therefore, there’ll be less good games.”