Clemson football & Alabama on an island in CFB Playoff expansion discussion

There are very few fans or administrators outside of the camps of Clemson football and the Alabama Crimson Tide who aren’t in favor of expanding the CFB Playoff.

As a matter of fact, the pressure to expand the playoff has been so immense that the CFB Playoff management committee has reviewed 63 different models for potentially expanding the playoff, which include fields of 6, 8, 12 and 16.

Throughout the talk of expansion, though, both Clemson coach Dabo Swinney and Alabama coach Nick Saban have been verbal in saying they are against expanding the field and they feel as if four teams is enough. Just last month, Saban reiterated his point that he believed expanding the playoff would almost kill the bowl season and would take away an opportunity from many athletes.

"“I think the playoff, as I said many years ago when we had just two teams in the playoff and expanded to four, that the more playoffs we have the less significant bowl games are going to be,” Saban said via 247 Sports. “It’s really not for me, and I don’t even think I’m capable of judging how significant the positive self-gratification that players, programs, and coaches get from being able to go to a bowl game.”"

Clemson football is on an island with Alabama, but that’s not going to change the end result

Once you get past Clemson and Alabama as the two perennial top programs in the nation, the next name that typically comes up is the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Though the Buckeyes have been in the playoff field four times- tied with Oklahoma for third- it seems that Ohio State AD Gene Smith has a different perspective than the sentiment we’ve heard from Clemson and Alabama.

"“I’m of the opinion that we need to expand,” Smith said. “I do believe we’re going to expand. I believe we should expand. “There’s a lot to be worked out there, but I think it’s going to happen, I really do. It’s just a matter of when.”"

Smith said that he does have concerns about the diminishing importance of the bowl games, but says he thinks there needs to be an automatic-qualifying element for the playoff through conference championships.

"“I’m a huge believer in conference championships, and I think everything we’ve done in a lot of our sports have diminished the conference championship,” Smith said. “And just what I thought would happen, and I shared publicly before it started, once we launched the CFP, the championships that we would win, the East and then ultimately in Indianapolis, would be lost because everybody the next day is driving back from Indianapolis and all they can think about was the show. Whether or not we’re in and where we’re gonna be seeded, and it would be forgotten that the team had just gone through the gauntlet.”"

It’s easy to see the points being made about the bowl games and the fact of the matter is that the best team in the nation has won the National Championship every year since the CFB Playoff, so the system isn’t broken in that respect.

But it still doesn’t change the fact that teams want to feel included.

Everyone wants to feel like they have a shot and you really don’t in a four-team field. Every year, a Power-5 conference championship (normally the Pac-12) gets left out of the playoff field altogether.

In an expanded field, every team in the Power-5 would at least be given a fair shot. If they can win their conference, they’d earn a berth and it’d really be that simple. The automatic-qualifier element also takes the human element out of selection, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

No matter how you feel about playoff expansion, the truth of the matter is that it’s going to happen in the future and it might be sooner rather than later.