Cliff Kirkpatrick

SHOAL CREEK – Alabama football coach Nick Saban was presented with the situation of having an opening gay player on his team, and he's ready.

Saban was asked about it before he teed off at the Regional Tradition NCR Pro-Am on Wednesday at Shoal Creek.

He would treat an openly gay player on his team with dignity and respect, and would expect everyone in the program to do the same.

"I would expect everybody to be very respectful of what is private for most people and treat that person with dignity and respect, and respect them for being a good teammates and being part of our team and doing the things that require them to be a good person on our team," Saban said.

This is following former Missouri defensive end Michael Sam being drafted in the seventh round last weekend by the St. Louis Rams as the first openly gay player in the NFL.

More scheduling: The SEC decided to stay with eight conference games a year instead of going with nine like Saban wanted. He understands teams want easy wins to get bowl eligible, but now he's taking a grander approach.

Saban is interested in a committee to decide who goes to bowl games. That way, strength of schedule is looked at so teams will play better teams.

A quality loss would mean as much, or more, than an easy win over a pushover.

"Why don't we do it like basketball and let them pick all the teams for all the bowl games," Saban said of the playoff committee. "Then it doesn't matter what your record is. Who's to say that having six wins and having a 6-6 season is what qualifies to go to a bowl game. If we do that (committee), then people wouldn't be so concerned about the type of schedule that they play or the number of wins they got."

Schedule update: Saban's in on the lookout for a nonconference neutral site game for 2016.

Penn State backed out of the game that was planned a while ago. The only future neutral site game set is Wisconsin in Dallas in the 2015.