Dabo Swinney and Clemson football are no strangers to the College Football Playoff.
Fresh off yet another playoff appearance in 2024, Swinney and the Tigers return the most production of any team in the Power Four and look like one of the nation's top contenders again.
The new College Football Playoff format has come with plenty of debate about how to seed and it was decided in the first year of the 12-team field that the top four seeds would be given to the four highest-ranked conference champions. If you didn't win your conference, you didn't have a shot to get a top four seed and a first-round bye.
So why didn't Clemson get a bye? The committee decided to give that seed to Boise State who won the Mountain West and was ranked higher as a conference champion than Clemson.
Still, if Clemson was one of the four highest-ranked conference champions, it would have gotten a first-round bye. Unfortunately, it had to go to Texas and we all know what happened there.
A new format has been approved, however, according to CBS Sports. It's a more straightforward seeding model but it could actually hurt Clemson. While the conference champions were the only ones who could receive a bye in the inaugural format, the new format just gives the top four teams in the playoff committee's final rankings that first-round bye.
How does this hurt Clemson? Well, if it went by last year's rankings, the Tigers would have been the last seed (they already were) but if they didn't win that ACC title game, they wouldn't have made the playoff (and deservedly so). Obviously, last year is a bad example of why this new format could hurt Clemson.
It's the fact that the ACC is viewed as the worst of the Power Four conferences and the new format could require Clemson to win out or go 11-1 at worst to even have a shot at a first-round bye. Winning the ACC title isn't viewed as an elite accomplishment like winning the SEC or Big Ten and we've seen champions from the conference miss out on the College Football Playoff in the four-team format (yes, even an undefeated Florida State team).
This isn't a knock on Clemson, but rather the conference isn't strong enough to the point that Clemson could lose 1-2 games and still be considered for a top-four spot and a first-round bye.
So it looks like Clemson will have to run the table in the ACC and sweep its non-conference schedule moving forward if it plans on securing that coveted first-round bye in the new playoff format.