{"id":485478,"date":"2026-01-01T20:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T20:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/485478\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T20:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T20:14:10","slug":"nick-saban-demands-change-provides-solution-for-transfer-portal-and-college-football-calendar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/485478\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Saban demands change, provides solution for transfer portal and college football calendar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not for the first time, former Alabama<\/a><\/strong> coach and current ESPN analyst Nick Saban<\/a><\/strong> has weighed in on the state of the college football calendar. It stinks, he said.<\/p>\n

Saban, speaking from the set of ESPN\u2019s College GameDay before Thursday\u2019s playoff games, made a case for changing the calendar. It\u2019s imperative the sport does so, he claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to change the calendar,\u201d Saban said. \u201cSo, chaos in college football starts tomorrow. The portal opens. There\u2019s already been 120 starters say they\u2019re getting in the portal from big Power Four schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s going to set off a chain of events that will drastically change the outlook for several teams going into the 2026 season. That\u2019s not avoidable \u2014 it\u2019s just a matter of when it happens.<\/p>\n

Saban outlined some potential disaster scenarios that could unfold for a few teams still competing. It\u2019s not pretty.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what happens if Ole Miss<\/a><\/strong> wins and Oregon<\/a><\/strong> wins, so Oregon\u2019s got two coordinators trying to take guys from their (old) team to their (new) team and guys from other teams to their (new) team?\u201d Saban said. \u201cAnd Ole Miss has got six coaches going to LSU<\/a><\/strong> trying to take guys to LSU from their (old) team but they\u2019ve got to play a game. Now is that chaos, or is that chaos?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis whole college football calendar needs to change. That would be my New Year\u2019s resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The big question from there\u2026 how? Kirk Herbstreit<\/strong> put it to Saban on that front.<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides you, who do we go to with that?\u201d Herbstreit said. \u201cWho do you, with your influential voice, who do you call to make that happen? We keep talking about changing, but who changes it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Nick Saban revealed part of the problem. Bluntly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anybody in authority in college football except the conference commissioners,\u201d Saban said. \u201cSo if they can\u2019t get together on it you\u2019re going to have a problem. But everybody\u2019s going to be sort of having their own self-interest in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

A solution from Nick Saban<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Nick Saban explained his thought process. He wants to see the elimination of the January transfer window.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless they make the portal in May, which I\u2019ve 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\u2019ll be a mess),\u201d Saban said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have their team together until after the draft, after free agency. It\u2019s May.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo do the same thing in college football and you wouldn\u2019t have these issues with coaches changing jobs, because everybody could finish the season with their team, which is what\u2019s best for the players, that\u2019s No. 1. Because there\u2019d be no hurry. Because now there\u2019s a hurry because all these recruiting calendar is, \u2018Hurry up and get a coach or you can\u2019t take advantage of an early signing date and you can\u2019t take advantage of (the) portal.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not for the first time, former Alabama coach and current ESPN analyst Nick Saban has weighed in on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":485479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-485478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115821678790254432","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}