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Alabama football coach Nick Saban autographs the shirt of Children's of Alabama escort Shawn Anthony at the Regions Tradition NCR Pro-Am on May 13, 2015 at Shoal Creek Golf Club in Hoover, Alabama. (Frank Couch/fcouch@al.com)

(Frank Couch)

For a man who loves college football, Nick Saban sure does seem to have a lot of problems with the state of the game. The more he talks these days, the more it sounds like he's not crazy about the way the game is played or the way the game is run.

Mike Raita, my colleague on The Zone on My68 in Birmingham, noticed this pattern of peevishness and wondered out loud: Could Saban's displeasure be enough to run him right out of the game?

The Alabama coach has made it clear for years now that he's no fan of the hurry-up no-huddle offensive explosion that college football has become. Remember his famous quote: "Is this what we want football to be?"

Lately, he's been airing a new list of grievances. At a number of stops this spring, from Crimson Caravan visits to the Regions Tradition Pro-Am, he's been asked about the latest subjects impacting the sport, and he's taken a negative slant on the hot-button issues of the day.

The four-team playoff? Never mind that Alabama made it last year. Saban's not happy that the playoff games overshadow the rest of the bowl games, as if that hasn't been the case since the advent of the BCS Championship Game.

He went so far Wednesday to suggest that "maybe we need to go one way or the other. Either have bowl games or have playoffs but not try to have both."

Whoa.

What about those cost-of-attendance stipends, part of the NCAA's wise new emphasis on student-athlete welfare as opposed to the foolish old impossible dream of leveling an inherently unlevel playing field?

Saban may like the concept, but he's no fan of the execution.

"To do it the way we did it is going to be a nightmare," he said, citing the ability of each school to potentially game the system by coming up with its own cost-of-attendance number.

How about those satellite camps that Michigan's Jim Harbaugh and others are using to invade the South? Saban thinks they're "ridiculous."

Chicken Little would gather up all those acorns and suggest the sky is falling because the coach is moaning and groaning, more than usual. Saban even complained during spring practice about the media asking his players about other players, a relatively innocuous staple of Sports Journalism 101.

Tim Brando of Fox Sports, who's known Saban for years, has predicted that Alabama will win the national championship this season and Saban will retire afterward to become a TV analyst. It sounded like a shot-in-the-dark when Brando first said it, but the more you think about it, the more you have to wonder if it's a real possibility.

Look. Nobody around here - except maybe the Auburn family - wants to see Saban move from the Alabama sideline to the College GameDay set anytime soon. He's still too good at what he does and has too much to offer the sport from the inside. For all of his complaints, he still seems to get a lot of positive self-gratification out of working with his players.

As for all that griping, he's never been shy about offering a strong take, pro or con, on any issue affecting his sport. Maybe when he stops griping is when Alabama should start worrying that he's getting ready to retire to spend more time with his ESPN family.