Why CFP expansion could change Clemson football’s ‘really consistent’ schedule model
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Over the past decade, Clemson has taken pride in what athletic director Graham Neff describes as a “really consistent” football scheduling philosophy.
But, Neff said, the school is also monitoring how that strategy might change thanks to one “big unknown” — next season’s College Football Playoff expansion.
Excluding the 2020 season affected by COVID-19, Clemson has hosted an in-state FCS team such as Furman, S.C. State or Wofford every year since 2007.
Under coach Dabo Swinney, the Tigers have generally supplemented that with a home game against a Group of Five FBS team, a game against another Power Five team or Notre Dame through a home-and-home series and their annual rivalry game against South Carolina.
Neff said Clemson’s future football schedules, which follow the same format, are yet to be affected. And he doesn’t anticipate the Tigers’ annual game against the Gamecocks changing “one iota.” As both schools have been saying publicly for years, the rivalry game is safe.
With the CFP expanding from four to 12 teams in 2024, though, Neff said Clemson is “being nimble” and anticipating potential schedule changes depending on how the CFP selection committee values strength of schedule in an expanded field.
“There’s a thought that it would be very different,” Neff told The State. “It actually hasn’t played out yet. But strength of schedule, how does the selection committee (view it?) ... How does that all take root? Twelve is very different than four.
“So I think that’s the big point, too, of just uncertainty. And therefore us being nimble to be respondent to how to best position Clemson to make a playoff, let alone to have great events and a great seven home games here in the Valley.”
Playoff access hasn’t been an issue for Clemson under the CFP’s current four-team format, which in 2014 replaced the two-team BCS championship game format.
The Tigers, under Swinney, made six straight College Football Playoffs from 2015 to 2020 by following a clear road map: either winning out or losing once in while winning the ACC. That, of course, led to four championship appearances and national titles in 2016 and 2018.
“Entry into an exclusive four-team playoff placed a premium on not losing games,” as USA TODAY described it, and Clemson and other Power Five teams could bank on the selection committee rewarding them for taking care of business.
Indeed, 28 of the 36 teams selected for the CFP through 2022 have been either undefeated Power Five conference champions or one-loss Power Five conference champions.
What changes in new CFP model?
Expanding the field by eight teams could significantly alter the criteria for CFP contention — especially when it comes to seeding, a crucial element of the expanded playoff.
The selection committee’s six highest-ranked conference champions will all receive automatic bids, and the other six seeds will be the committee’s next six highest-ranked teams.
But only the top four highest-ranked conference champions will receive a first-round bye and face a schedule of three possible playoff games.
The other two conference champs will host first-round games, meaning that after a lengthy regular season they’d have to win four games in a row to be crowned college football’s national champion — double the previous number of games for a CFP champ.
That’s not to get into seeding among the lower six teams, where a metric such as strength of schedule could be the difference between, say, a 10-2 Clemson team hosting a game as a No. 7 or No. 8 seed or playing on the road as a No. 9 or No. 10 seed in the first round. (The No. 5-8 seeds will host first-round games.)
Schools, in other words, are thinking hard about how their conference schedules and non-conference schedules are positioning them for a 12-team College Football Playoff.
Are eight conference games enough?
Are two non-conference Power Five games enough?
Are “buy games” against FCS schools dead weight?
Another complicating factor is a lack of consistency among the Power Five conferences in terms of how many conference games they play.
The Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten all play nine conference games annually, while the SEC (after some debate) settled on eight conference games for 2024 and ACC teams are locked into an eight-game conference schedule through 2026 under a new scheduling format without divisions.
As detailed by USA Today’s Blake Toppmeyer, that places further emphasis on non-conference schedules for SEC teams (and, in the same vein, ACC teams). To be clear, an undefeated ACC team is going to be in excellent position regardless of CFP expansion.
“But,” as Toppmeyer wrote from the SEC perspective, “how does the league best position itself to qualify its third-, fourth- and fifth-best teams for at-large selection? Tough to think playing fewer conference games and more cupcake games as compared to Big Ten peers is going to help the SEC in those at-large selection debates.”
Neff said Clemson is “scheduled out for quite some time” following its current philosophy. This season, the Tigers will play FCS Charleston Southern, Florida Atlantic and Notre Dame (through an ACC scheduling agreement) at home and travel to South Carolina.
Next season, they’ll open against Georgia in a neutral-site game — the 2024 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium — before hosting The Citadel, App State and USC.
“So we’ve been really consistent with that,” Neff said. “And at this point, we are scheduled out to be consistent with that type of setup. … But we’re certainly tracking and will be nimble.”
What would CFP expansion have looked like in 2022?
In the 2022 College Football Playoff, Georgia beat Ohio State and TCU beat Michigan in the semifinals before Georgia routed TCU in the national championship game. But the playoff would’ve looked much different under a 12-team format.
Based on last year’s final CFP rankings released after conference championship week and going by the new criteria, here’s a look at how first-round games and quarterfinal games would have looked under the 12-team format, as compiled by CBS Sports. Note that a conference title doesn’t guarantee a top six seed.
Byes
Top four highest-ranked conference champions
No. 1 Georgia (SEC champ)
No. 2 Michigan (Big Ten champ)
No. 3 Clemson (ACC champ)
No. 4 Utah (Pac-12 champ)
Rest of the field
No. 5 TCU
No. 6 Ohio State
No. 7 Alabama
No. 8 Tennessee
No. 9 Kansas State (Big 12 champ)
No. 10 Southern Cal
No. 11 Penn State
No. 12 Tulane (AAC champ)
First round games
Game 1: No. 9 Kansas State at No. 8 Tennessee
Game 2: No. 12 Tulane at No. 5 TCU
Game 3: No. 10 Southern Cal at No. 7 Alabama
Game 4: No. 11 Penn State at No. 6 Ohio State
Quarterfinals
Game 5: No. 1 Georgia vs. Kansas State/Tennessee
Game 6: No. 4 Utah vs. Tulane/TCU
Game 7: No. 2 Michigan vs. Southern Cal/Alabama
Game 8: No. 3 Clemson vs. Penn State/Ohio State
