In July 2021, in the conference room of a downtown Charlotte hotel, a day before ACC football media days, the conference’s head coaches gathered to hear a presentation.
Jack Swarbrick, then Notre Dame athletic director, responsible for explaining to the group the new expanded college football playoffsstood before them. For more than an hour, Swarbrick described the 12-team format, the same one that kicks off this weekend.
At the end of his presentation, Swarbrick looked around the room with unsettling expressions.
They hated it.
The most among the haters? Clemson coach Dabo Swinney.
“At one point I had to tell them, ‘Look, guys, I’m just relaying the information to you,’” Swarbrick recalled.
More than three years later, days before the start of the first round of the playoffs, Swinney and his Tigers, among others, are the beneficiaries of the expanded format he so roundly criticized. The 12th seed out of a field of 12 teams, Clemson won the ACC championship game to secure the fifth and final designated automatic qualifying spot for the conference champions.
And yet, Swinney has no regrets. He stands by his previous comments: Expansion is turning college football into something it never wanted to see.
“It’s what I thought it would be,” he told Yahoo Sports in an interview earlier this month. “What I liked about the old way was I thought college football was unique. And now it’s like everything else. It’s like the pros.
He’s right, of course.
Even the most ardent proponents of an extension of the playoffs recognize that the new postseason brings college football one step closer to emulating its big brother. This is one measure among many others on the market. the industry’s well-documented march toward professionalism.
In July, for example, schools are allowed to pay players directly. They will sign them contracts, some even with buyouts, and many of them negotiated through agents. Schools are hiring NFL coaches and front office executives to operate in this new professional world.
Hell, college football even adopts the playing rules of its professional counterpart. This year, the sport added a two-minute warning.
“It seems like college football is more like professional football right now” new North Carolina coach Bill Belichick admitted in an interview last week with Pat McAfee.
Pro-like changes have significant impacts on the industry. Their positive or negative character remains to be debated. But one thing is becoming clear: There is parity in the game for the first time in years, if ever – another NFL staple.
This parity? This is the result, coaches and administrators believe, of players’ freedom of movement.
Even Swinney believes it’s true.
“What is the most important position in football? Strategist. Everybody has an opportunity to go after a quarterback,” Swinney said. “These kids don’t sit down. Or the kids have played really well and they have the opportunity to move elsewhere, and financially it’s a no-brainer for them. You can go from an inexperienced quarterback to a great one in the blink of an eye. This is a game changer for many programs.
Five of the 12 playoff teams have a first-year starting quarterback. Dillon Gabriel, at his third school, is leading top-seeded Oregon to the playoffs after playing at Oklahoma last year. Sam Leavitt, QB for Arizona State, began his career at Michigan State.
Eighth-seeded Ohio State starts Will Howard a year after throwing 24 touchdowns for Kansas State, and Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke played in the Mid-American Conference last season. Finally, there’s Notre Dame, which signed Riley Leonard from Duke in the offseason.
This ignores perhaps the most important beneficiary of any team’s playoff portal: SMU.
Mustangs are a shining example of this new age model. They attracted substitutes and players from more historic football powers and put them in starting positions.
Brashard Smith, the team’s top running back, is a former four-star prospect who played receiver in Miami behind Hurricanes star Xavier Restrepo. Starting tight end Matthew Hibner played at Michigan in a reserve role last year.
Major college transfers make up the entirety of SMU’s defensive front, which Swinney describes as “the biggest D-line we’ve played this year.” Two are from Miami, one from Arkansas and another from Georgia.
“They weren’t THE guys at their last school,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said. “These schools didn’t want them to leave, but they had an opportunity to make an impact.” »
With the new transfer rules, Lashlee says college football’s blue bloods can no longer “go full throttle, create a monopoly and dominate over and over again,” he says. Players, previously limited to a single school and penalized for transferring, are now free to move. They leave school to start jobs and, in some cases, higher wages.
“They transfer to be able to play and it spreads the talent out more,” Lashlee said.
Kind of like free agency in…the NFL, right?
Except, of course, in college there is no employment or collective bargaining and, at least for now, there are no enforceable, binding contracts. These are perhaps the main differences that still exist between the two.
“When (Lashlee) got there, they didn’t have staff like they have now,” Swinney said. “He won’t have time to build it through high school recruiting. You now have the opportunity to pick up guys.
SMU isn’t alone in building its roster to find the promised land of the playoffs. At Indiana, first-year coach Curt Cignetti largely built a Group of Five transfer teammany from his old school, James Madison.
IU’s top four tacklers are first-year transfers. The same goes for the top four rushers and top four receivers. Their leader in sacks is a transfer, Mikail Kamara, and their long snapper is a transfer too.
IU’s transfers – 22 in total – call themselves the “Five Star Group.” They meet Notre Dame Friday night in South Bend with reminders of the Big Ten’s preseason projections. The Hoosiers were picked 17th out of 18 teams.
“They said we had too many Group of Five players,” IU star linebacker Aiden Fisher said earlier this season.
The No. 1 team in the country also has some portal guys, many of whom come from the SEC. Two of Oregon’s top three receivers come from Texas A&M and Alabama, the second-leading tackler comes from Ole Miss, and Jordan Burch, second in sacks, played at South Carolina.
Ohio State’s gate was one of the most highly touted in the country, with many also coming from the SEC, including safety Caleb Downs and running back Quinshon Judkins.
A playoff team almost completely devoid of transfers? Clemson, which was the only non-military academy not to accept senior transfers – a long-standing fixture of the program under Swinney.
But in this professional world, even that is changing.
Clemson signed its first transfer without a quarterback in six years on Monday with Southeast Missouri State wide receiver Tristan Smith. This decision sent shock waves through the world of college football. Swinney has opposed accepting transfers for years, pointing to the fact that his program doesn’t have many “gaps” to fill.
Clemson doesn’t have many transfer players, and Swinney has often said he’s against sending them out.
Alas, he ultimately found a spot for an FCS wideout. Will this open the floodgates? Unlikely.
“We’re not looking for a lot of these guys, but if you have a void, it doesn’t matter who you are, you can fill it,” he said. “It’s an equalizer.”
The new parity of college football like the NFL will be on display this weekend. What unfolds over the next month is largely a professional-style playoff series, as Swinney claims. There are first-round byes, home games and winter weather.
But it’s not all bad, he finally admits.
“It’s created more opportunities and it’s going to continue (to expand), but it’s just changed the focus of the playoffs.” It’s all about the playoffs. That’s probably not a bad thing,” he said.
But, like the NFL, fans should prepare for more losses given the nature of parity. Everyone needs to be more patient than ever, Swinney says.
“There won’t be many undefeated teams,” he said. “Just a few years ago, the Chiefs got the wild card and made the Super Bowl. When they stood up and held up the trophy, they didn’t say, “But you all had a really bad regular season!” This is where we are heading. It will be more like the NFL as far as mentality and psyche go.
Could Clemson be college football’s version of the wild-card Chiefs? They were the last team on the field and suffered three defeats this season, two of them in resounding fashion. Can they eliminate the Longhorns and then beat the Sun Devils in the Peach Bowl quarterfinals? How would they fare in a semifinal game against Oregon, Ohio State or Tennessee?
Buckle up, says Swinney: The playoff changes aren’t over and Super League is coming too. “It will increase to 14 or 16 teams and the whole thing will be restructured.”
