Clemson Football: CFB Playoff expansion and bubble needed for 2020

Clemson football could compete in an expanded CFB Playoff

The Clemson football team is one of several still competing for a spot in the CFB Playoff as we head down the stretch of the 2020 season.

The Tigers are just a couple of wins away from locking up a spot in the ACC Championship game and will have a chance to avenge a loss to Notre Dame in Charlotte at that point.

That being said, there has been an angry ravaging of COVID-19 positive tests and subsequent contact tracing that has been seen across the country. The SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 all had at least a game canceled or postponed last weekend.

There have already been a handful of games canceled or postponed that were originally scheduled for this weekend. As Clemson football has already had the fortune of playing eight games, the truth of the matter is that it just seems as if CFB teams are walking a tightrope as they head into the final month of the regular season.

Different conferences have different protocols. Each program seems to do contact tracing just a little different. With all these differences and the amount of games we’re seeing canceled, this would be a perfect year for the CFB Playoff committee to act with some foresight and make a change that will ensure we are able to see an ending to this strange season: Expansion and a bubble.

Clemson football would benefit from the guaranteed spot of an expanded playoff & we’d at least have some control over games being played

One of the greatest fears among CFB Playoff committee members at this point has to be the prospect of getting two semifinal matchups set up to have one team have an outbreak and the game have to be canceled.

However, the committee could solve that problem- at least in a way- by developing a bubble with expansion and it wouldn’t be all that difficult, at least from the outside looking in.

You could expand the playoff to six or eight teams and put the asterisk that a team is only eligible if they have played eight games- possibly seven if you’re wanting to be generous, but I would go with eight.

Those teams that didn’t get eight games in are just out of luck. It’s unfair to the other programs around the nation who did get eight games in because their conferences acted more swiftly to allow for makeup dates and the like.

With those 6 or 8 teams, you’d self-quarantine for seven days (as MLB did before its postseason) and then enter the bubble- possibly in a place like Arizona. The three weeks of matchups (a quarterfinals, semifinals and National Title game) could all be conducted at the same stadium (or possibly two stadiums) and the teams would be kept safely away from the outside world over the course of the weeks that they’d be out of school anyway.

At this point, this seems like the only ‘sure fire’ way of making the playoff happen and, though it may have some holes, it gets the overall goal accomplished and that’s finishing the season, while rewarding those teams who deserve to compete in the postseason.