It’s always a good day down on the Plains and up on Rocky Top when Nick Saban lets everyone know that he’s a little worried about Auburn and Tennessee.

Plans for the biggest changes to the SEC in 30 years are coming within the next 90 days, and news is starting to leak about league commissioner Greg Sankey’s goals for the new schedules. Texas and Oklahoma are joining the SEC in 2024, and the confederacy of cowboys are disrupting the balance of a league that’s already the toughest in the country. For Alabama, that might mean playing one of the more difficult schedules in the SEC every year.

At least that’s what Saban wanted everyone to appreciate when he participated in an interview last week with Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellinger. The league is planning to add an extra conference game to everyone’s schedules, blow up the two-division system and give each team three permanent rivals. Saban let slip that Alabama’s permanent rivals could be Auburn, Tennessee and LSU.

RELATED: Nick Saban takes issue with proposed SEC schedule

NFL Combine: Results from Sunday for state players

NFL Combine: Which running back ran the fastest on Sunday

Oh, and Saban said it wasn’t fair to Alabama.

Does he have a point? Well, maybe, but in the SEC even scheduling chatter during the offseason can be used as fuel for the roasting of rivals.

Everyone got a good laugh out of Saban’s concerns. After all these years at Alabama, Saban finally lost to Tennessee last season. The Vols’ first victory against Alabama since 2006 came on the final play of the game. Saban’s Alabama teams are 15-1 against Tennessee, but now the Volunteers are too tough? Auburn and LSU have quality coaches again, so suddenly two Tigers per season are too many?

I’m not here to defend Saban. Piling on Alabama’s coach for whining about Alabama’s future schedule is fair game — and plenty of people did it — but maybe some of his gripes about how the league is determining everyone’s fixed opponents are worth closer examination.

I’m not ready to call Saban a whistleblower, but he’s definitely throwing up smoke to let everyone know that there might be a problem in the league office.

Saban’s interview with SI was a classic example of using the media to craft a narrative and project an agenda, and no one can fault Alabama’s coach for advocating for Alabama. Saban doesn’t have a problem with adding an extra SEC game in 2024. He apparently just doesn’t want to play Auburn, Tennessee and LSU every year while the Vols, for example, might be rounding out their fixed opponents with Vanderbilt and Kentucky.

By revealing the league’s potential plans, Alabama’s wise Puppetmaster of the SEC is attempting to spin things in his favor. At this point, it’s not even clear if the league’s new schedules in 2024 will include nine games.

Should they? Maybe not. I’m not convinced, and I don’t think Saban is either. More games is only going to work if the schedules are fair.

The context is important. This is the last season for the SEC’s two-division system. In 2024, the 16-team conference will be one big Wrestlemania. It’s going to be fun for fans, especially with the expanded, 12-team playoff coming, too. Let’s assume that the SEC will want four teams in the playoff every year, one auto bid and three at-large invites. That means one-loss teams in the SEC should be fine. Two loss teams?

Trust me, y’all, there’s still going to be plenty to debate with a 12-team playoff and the regular season will absolutely still matter. Saban knows this already, and that’s why he’s talking out of turn.

For Alabama and Auburn, this new format of fixed opponents could mean the difference between making the playoffs and staying home. Saban contends that Tennessee is a traditional SEC power on the level historically with Auburn and LSU. He’s correct. When it comes to SEC championship, here’s the breakdown per team of current league members: Alabama (29), Georgia (14), Tennessee (13), LSU (12), Florida (eight), Auburn (eight), Ole Miss (six), Kentucky (two) and Mississippi State (one). For those curious, Texas has won 30 conference championships, shared or outright, between the Southwest Conference (27) and the Big 12 (three). Oklahoma claims 50 conference championships, including 14 Big 12 titles since 2000.

Using math because who can dispute math and numbers, the league has cooked up a metric to sell everyone on the new schedules. It’s essentially a power-ranking system of the SEC, plus Texas and Oklahoma, over the last 10 years. How Saban described the league’s analytics made me laugh.

“They said they did a 10-year whatever,” Saban said.

Exactly.

“Look historically over a 25-year history, and the three best teams in the East are Georgia, Tennessee and Florida,” Saban said to SI. “You look historically at 25 years, Alabama, LSU and Auburn are the three best teams in the West. So we’re playing them all.”

To hear Saban tell it, Sankey should just rank every team based on the spending power of NIL collectives.

Should the SEC stick to eight-game conference schedules with everyone playing one permanent rival every season? That’s probably the fairest way to do things, but it’s not the most lucrative and college football, let’s face it, is all about the money. It’s why Texas and Oklahoma are joining the SEC in the first place, right?

Personally, I think the SEC should play 10 conference games a year like in during the pandemic year. I don’t care about the math. Make it happen.

Is Saban’s beef worth considering, though? Perhaps it’s worth considering from the Auburn perspective.

If the SEC makes it a nine-game conference slate, Auburn will presumably play Alabama and Georgia every year. I know fans will want Auburn-Florida to be renewed, but it’s only fair that Auburn plays someone like South Carolina in that third spot. And, besides, in the new scheduling format, Auburn will still be playing Florida every other year. The current two-division model is flawed, so the current thinking goes, because cross-division opponents meet so infrequently.

From 1927 to 2002, Auburn and Florida played every season. Since 2003, the Tigers and Gators have only played four times. With a nine-game schedule and one division, Auburn and Florida can renew the rivalry on a biennial basis. For me, the gap year will make some rivalries even better.

Is Tennessee to Alabama what South Carolina is to Auburn. Not even close. Another thing to consider: Isn’t LSU and Alabama just a “rivalry game” because of Saban? Trading out LSU for Mississippi State would probably be fairer for Alabama, but some things are more important to the SEC than fairness for Alabama, and that’s the TV ratings when Alabama and LSU play every season.

Let’s not ignore the most important metric of all.

I asked the SEC about Saban’s claim and the league offered that it has been working “on format options with our schools for some time now and have shared information along the way as those options have been discussed.” The SEC added that “no decisions have been made, but with the accelerated entry of Oklahoma and Texas” those decisions are expected to be made in the next 90 days. Over in Louisiana, there have been reports that LSU fixed opponents will be Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas A&M.

Saban’s water cooler complaint is legitimate, but don’t expect the SEC to change anything for Alabama. And if the league does, then all I’m asking is for Sankey to please drop that SEC bombshell any other time than the Friday afternoon before the Final Four.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ‘ultimate team’”. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.