As the playoff format faces a potential massive expansion, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney weighs the pursuit of postseason inclusion against the looming extinction of traditional conference championship games.
Even if the College Football Playoff had doubled from 12 teams to 24 for the 2025 season, the Clemson Tigers, despite having nine NFL Draft talents on the roster, would not have earned enough wins as a 7-6 team to make the tournament.
The Tigers are expected to be a fringe Top 25 team in 2026, and aren't expected to make the CFP this season.
If the CFP expanded to 24 teams, Clemson would be projected right on the bubble of making the tournament.
Would Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney be open to expanding the CFP to 24 teams?
Per greenvilleonline.com, Swinney is indifferent to the CFP potentially expanding to 16 teams (as the SEC wants) or 24 teams.
"It doesn’t really matter what I think," Swinney said.
While Swinney doesn't believe his opinion would do much on the matter (it certainly didn't matter to NIL or the transfer portal), the Tigers head coach would like to keep conference championship games, something that would probably go away with a 24-team format.
“I hate to see championship games go away,” Swinney said. "Do I like it? No. But I totally understand it, because that’s where it’s going."
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told reporters on Wednesday that he's backing the 24-team model, believing that too many deserving programs were left out of the CFP last season. More programs need a "hope" of making the tournament.
"When you're leaving national-championship-contending teams out of the playoff, you don't have the right number," Phillips said, via ESPN. "We suffered through it with Florida State when the field was four, and I know other schools have suffered for it, and I've said this very directly. Notre Dame was a CFP-worthy team this year.
"If you're going to ask presidents and chancellors and boards to continue to invest in their football programs, it's really important that they have hope, that they have an opportunity at the beginning of the season to get into the playoff."
It feels like the CFP will eventually expand to 24 teams, even if the next step is to go from 12 teams to 16.
There's more money to be made with more teams, though it could be the death of the conference championship, which has been falling out of style in the last decade.