COLLEGE FOOTBALL HAS TOO MUCH AT STAKE, SO PLEASE PUT NICK SABAN IN CHARGE

At least playoff seedings will be changed this year, thanks to Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti, but a sport overloaded with complexities should be run by a commissioner who currently talks to Pat McAfee

If college football is the No. 2 kingdom in American sports — and why wouldn’t it be, noticing the emotional breakdown of NBA ratings? — it’s vital to know the identities of Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti. The first man listed is the SEC commissioner. The second man listed is the Big Ten commissioner. With the help of no one else and not even AI, they are determining the future of an absolute crazyhouse.

Already, their game is overloaded with transfer portals, NIL issues and even climate pollution based on longer, coast-to-coast road trips. Are Sankey and Petitti ready for the wilder fallout? Is anyone sure they should be in charge of the massive challenge, thanks to their political (and financial) leanings?

Because bedlam will happen. When they eventually announce automatic qualifiers for an expanded 14-team playoff tournament, in 2026, America will hear regional yelping that might demand scalp removals. Is it wrong to expect the SEC and Big Ten to secure four teams each season — no matter what, regardless of fate, even after a downer year when Sankey’s league couldn’t establish a fourth qualifier? Is it wrong to allow only two bids for the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference? Is it wrong to preserve one at-large spot — for Notre Dame, which remains an independent for lame privileged reasons — and save one for a Group of 5 champion?

Or, should we shrink the event to only eight programs? That would be my idea, given some of the garbage we saw in the first round.

There is some good news from New Orleans. The two bosses collaborated this week in the French Quarter — not far from where a lunatic killed 14 people in the wee hours of New Year’s Day — and decided seedings would be changed in 2025. This is based on the absurdity of Boise State ranked No. 3 when semifinalists Texas and Penn State were rated lower. The selection committee’s four highest-ranked teams should receive the top four seeds and first-round byes. Such obviousness should be approved unanimously by a sideshow of 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua.

“I’m prepared to vote for seeding change,” Sankey said.

“We're in favor of going to a straight seeding, where there's no difference between rankings and seeding like we had this year," Petitti said. "We're in support for next year.”

Bravo. Something has been fixed when it never should have existed. Which brings us to the real quandary: College football doesn’t need two fraternizers but ONE decision-maker on a grander platform. What we need is a commissioner, with Penn State coach James Franklin among many advocating Nick Saban, who makes too much sense to sit beside Pat McAfee on a weekend studio set.

“I think one of the most important things we can do is, let’s get a commissioner that is waking up every single morning and going to bed every single night, making decisions in the best interest of college football,” Franklin said. “I think Nick Saban would be the obvious choice. I think if we made that decision, Nick will probably call me tonight and say, ‘Don’t do this.’ But he’s the obvious choice, right? That would be a very important step moving forward to come up with some solutions and do what’s best for our sport.”

Hearing applause for his nominee, Franklin went so far to ask Saban in a face-to-face session: “You can keep trying to avoid this all you want, and I know ESPN and those guys don’t want to lose you, but I just think your impact on college football and your global understanding of what we need is important. And right now, no one’s running it. Right now, I’m going with you.”

That’s correct. The leader of Penn State football says “no one’s running it,” referring in part to the commissioner of the Big Ten, his own conference. Did Saban say no to Franklin or dabble in random words?

“James, congratulations on a great win, and I just want to ask — does this put you one step closer to being the commissioner of college football?” cracked Saban, who has said all along: “I’m not really looking for a job, but I do know I’d like to impact college football the best way I can, whether it’s being a spokesperson or anything else.”

Let’s assume he would take the position. Who would offer it? President Trump? Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman agrees on Saban. Oregon’s Dan Lanning agrees. Georgia’s Kirby Smart does, too, except he wonders if a commissioner would be squashed by university presidents and broadcast executives. “I think a commissioner would be a nice thing in theory, but what can they effectively get done? Nick would be great,” he said. “I know he’s a huge advocate for college football. He wants to make it better. He’s always been a person that believes in leave it better than you found it, and I have a lot of respect for how he does it. But I’m not the guy to say what a commissioner can and can’t do in terms of making it a better process for all of us. We are governed by separate circumstances. Conferences govern us. NCAA governs us. Now we have courts govern us.”

Also, Saban is an SEC creature. The Big Ten would howl and offer … Urban Meyer, who doesn’t quite have the wherewithal.

The offseason involves important news, which means college football remains a bigger player than the NBA and Major League Baseball. Adam Silver’s league was killed again in All-Star Game ratings and has lost more than five percent of viewership this season, with a 1.76 million average. MLB is involved a streaming mess for local game coverage and has monumental issues about simple existence — the Dodgers, Mets and a few other teams are spending lavishly when no one else shares the desire. “The real question is: Why aren’t all teams, across all markets, using the resources we know they have to put their best foot forward in an effort to be the last team standing?” said Tony Clark, executive director of the players’ union, who is preparing for a lockout late next year.

Nick Saban is strong enough to create logic. But he doesn’t want the headaches. He likes scorching people as a media personality, as he does in a VRBO rental commercial, when he tells a poor couple: “As your host, I have some rules. First, no showers longer than five minutes. This isn’t a spa. There’s no streaming. Only cable television. No games. No fun. The kids aren’t even allowed in the house. That’s the rule. You guys got about 10 minutes because this is Daddy Time in the tub.”

Then he stares at them inside a pool. Does he have more influence at ESPN than he would as a commissioner? Why do you think Sankey and Petitti are calling the shots? Let them deal with intense heat while daddy is tubbing.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.