Not for the first time, former Alabama coach and current ESPN analyst Nick Saban has weighed in on the state of the college football calendar. It stinks, he said.

Saban, speaking from the set of ESPN’s College GameDay before Thursday’s playoff games, made a case for changing the calendar. It’s imperative the sport does so, he claimed.

“We need to change the calendar,” Saban said. “So, chaos in college football starts tomorrow. The portal opens. There’s already been 120 starters say they’re getting in the portal from big Power Four schools.”

That’s going to set off a chain of events that will drastically change the outlook for several teams going into the 2026 season. That’s not avoidable — it’s just a matter of when it happens.

Saban outlined some potential disaster scenarios that could unfold for a few teams still competing. It’s not pretty.

“So what happens if Ole Miss wins and Oregon wins, so Oregon’s got two coordinators trying to take guys from their (old) team to their (new) team and guys from other teams to their (new) team?” Saban said. “And Ole Miss has got six coaches going to LSU trying to take guys to LSU from their (old) team but they’ve got to play a game. Now is that chaos, or is that chaos?

“This whole college football calendar needs to change. That would be my New Year’s resolution.”

The big question from there… how? Kirk Herbstreit put it to Saban on that front.

“Besides you, who do we go to with that?” Herbstreit said. “Who do you, with your influential voice, who do you call to make that happen? We keep talking about changing, but who changes it?”

Nick Saban revealed part of the problem. Bluntly.

“Well, I don’t think there’s anybody in authority in college football except the conference commissioners,” Saban said. “So if they can’t get together on it you’re going to have a problem. But everybody’s going to be sort of having their own self-interest in mind.”

A solution from Nick Saban

The long-time college football coach did offer a potential solution, though. And it makes a good deal of sense, though it would represent a fairly seismic shift.

Nick Saban explained his thought process. He wants to see the elimination of the January transfer window.

“Unless they make the portal in May, which I’ve said before, to kind of match up with the academic calendar, change spring practice till after that so that you can get your team together and work over the summer, just like an NFL team does (it’ll be a mess),” Saban said. “They don’t have their team together until after the draft, after free agency. It’s May.

“So do the same thing in college football and you wouldn’t have these issues with coaches changing jobs, because everybody could finish the season with their team, which is what’s best for the players, that’s No. 1. Because there’d be no hurry. Because now there’s a hurry because all these recruiting calendar is, ‘Hurry up and get a coach or you can’t take advantage of an early signing date and you can’t take advantage of (the) portal.’”