CLEMSON, S.C. — The expanded College Football Playoff brings something new for coaches who are used to planning for one game, maybe two: Rust vs. rest.
The 12-team bracket released Sunday features four teams in Oregon, Georgia,Boise State and Arizona State with first-round byes, whose games will take place Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
First-round games — Clemson at Texas, SMU at Penn State, Indiana at Notre Dame and Tennessee at Ohio State — all take place on Dec. 20-21.
The CFP committee intentionally or otherwise, gave first-round opponents an equal amount of rest. Clemson, Texas, SMU and Penn State all played in championship games Saturday. Indiana, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Tennessee all last played on Nov. 30.
It’s in the quarterfinals when college football might find out if plenty of rest leads to some rust.
The four top seeds get a long, welcome break from a grueling season. Georgia coach Kirby Smart made it clear accepting the trophy at the SEC championship game: “It means rest for a team that (SEC Commissioner) Greg Sankey and his staff sent on the road all year long. We get to take a little bit of a break and get ready for the College Football Playoff. This team needs some rest mentally, needs a little time off.”
But they will face an opponent filled with momentum that’s already tasted playoff success.
“You don’t stay the same during a bye week,” said Pete Shinnick, Towson football coach. “Your team changes. You just hope it gets you better.”
Few know better than Shinnick. He was coach at Division II West Florida in 2019 when he and his Argonauts defeated regional top seed Valdosta State, coming off a bye week, and kicked off a surprise run to the national title.
“We were a team of destiny, no doubt about it,” Shinnick recalled.
Shinnick said he thinks teams like Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State that have played in the four-team CFP championship chase know how to keep their teams on point because they’ve done it before after lengthy layoffs. Newcomers like Boise State and Arizona State?
“It will be an adjustment,” he said.
Some head coaches don’t see the debate, focused instead on championship goals.
“Are you asking me if I want to win a conference championship?” said Clemson coach Dabo Swinney two weeks ago before his Tigers secured their seventh CFP berth with a 34-31 win over SMU in the ACC championship game.
While byes are a CFP first, other NCAA divisions have long had uneven bracketing in their playoffs.
The Championship Subdivision has had a tournament since 1978. It had a 12-team field in 1982, set up like this year’s CFP. The grouping, then classified as Division I-AA, expanded to 16 playoff teams in 1986, 20 in 2010 and its current number of 24 in 2013.
From 2013 through this season, minus the COVID-19 season of 2020, 18 of 88 non-seeded teams won against FCS top eight seeds that received an extra week of rest. None of those 18 winners advanced past the semifinals.
Montana State coach Brent Vigen, whose team beat UT-Martin 49-17 on Saturday as the FCS’s top overall seed, was an assistant at North Dakota State for three national titles from 2011-13. He said the extra time off was essential to the Bison’s championship run.
“It really allows you to reset in some ways, put the regular season behind you and certainly get healthier,” Vigen said.
He concentrated on fundaments during bye week workouts to avoid coming out flat in their playoff opener.
“We go good (players) on good,” Vigen said. “If you were just stone cold taking these weeks off, I think you’d be in trouble.”
South Carolina had a six-game win streak to close the regular season but didn’t make the playoff. Gamecocks coach Shane Beamer was asked last month about the CFP and he noted some concerns about losing the bowl game experience.
“Let’s say you play on Saturday the first round,” Beamer said last month. “You’re going to leave on Friday, travel wherever you are. You play the game and if you lose your season’s over. That’s it. You don’t go to a bowl game.”
Vigen, a former offensive coordinator at Wyoming, said he believes the playoff format instantly engages players, even more so than waiting a month or more for a bowl game.
“You take multiple days off at a time,” he explained. “You might take almost a week off. One time we had a whole month between our last regular-season game and our bowl game. I think that can be tricky.”
The point for all playoff teams, Montana State’s Vigen said, is having a solid, workable plan so players don’t lose focus.
“You’re continually doing everything you can to keep your sword sharpened,” he said.
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