NCAA Division 1 Football To Shrink According To Nick Saban

Coach Nick Saban of the Alabama Crimson Tide said that NCAA Division I Football is going to shrink down to 60 to 70 teams.

I wrote about this probability in June while discussing the plight of Eastern Michigan out of the MAC Conference. Last week, we heard the announcement from Idaho that the Vandals would be going independent following the dismantling of WAC Football, which is the first step towards a drop down for the Vandals to 1AA, or FCS, as it’s now called.

Yesterday, Saban verified my suspicions in a radio interview discussing the SEC and the current state of big-time college football.

“Eventually in college football we’re going to have to get to 60 or 70 teams in this Division 1, whatever you want to call it. All these teams need to be playing each other,” he said.

Saban is correct, simply due to the influence and control that TV executives from CBS, ESPN and others now wield. Literally billions of dollars are being dished out for the TV rights to the power conferences and with those giant checks comes a certain understanding that every game needs to be important, crucial, compelling etc.

Unfortunately, the massive and rapid growth of the big-time conferences (SEC, ACC, BIG 12, BIG 10, PAC 12 and BIG EAST) could eventually lead to fewer football players having scholarships and an equally massive and rapid decline for the mid-major programs and many current FCS programs.

I can't find a decent article based on the radio interview, but basically what he said was that TV contracts are going to force the big conference schools to stop playing the small conference schools in the FBS and stop FBS vs FCS games altogether because it is bad for tv and not what they want for the money they are paying to broadcast these games. Once that stops, he predicts that a lot of schools bugets will end up way out of balance, forcing all but 60-70 FBS teams to move down to FCS or drop football altogether, while a lot of FCS teams are forced to drop to D2, D3, or gone altogether.