The College Football Playoff has existed for four years. Alabama has made the four-team field each year. That would be reason enough for Nick Saban to see no need for an expanded playoff, but the living legend has another reason.
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During Saban's final media session before the Crimson Tide face Clemson in Monday's Sugar Bowl — their third straight playoff meeting with the Tigers — he was asked about expanding the playoff.
“If you expand the playoff," he said, "I don’t think the playoff and bowl games will coexist very well."
Is he right?
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Though mid and low-level bowl games are routinely the subject of ardent criticism, the higher-tier ones, namely the New Year's Six games, are big revenue generators for the Power Five conferences and one Group of Five conference. The three playoff games already dominate postseason chatter, so if the field expanded to, for example, eight teams and there were seven playoff games, would the interest in non-playoff bowl games rapidly decline to the point where money-making games could not survive?
That's the million-dollar question, and it won't go away until the College Football Playoff does expand.
