The four coaches with teams in the College Football Playoff — Nick Saban (Alabama), Dabo Swinney (Clemson), Kirby Smart (Georgia) and Lincoln Riley (Oklahoma) — met in Atlanta on Thursday for a press conference.

Reporters asked the coaches a variety of questions about the upcoming playoff. One of those questions was, predictably, about whether or not the playoff should eventually expand to eight teams.

None of the four coaches thought it should.

It’s worth nothing that the current contract format extends for eight more years, as pointed out in a 247Sports BamaOnLine article.

Saban reportedly said that if there is eventually expansion, the plan needs to come from “somebody besides us, who is in a better position to make a decision of what do you want to accomplish in college football.

“I think a few years ago, going to a bowl game was a unique thing in college football because it rewarded a lot of players who participated, had good seasons, had an opportunity to go to a bowl game,” Saban added. “Their fans could enjoy a bowl game. We sort of started the two-team deal (BCS). Now it’s a four-team deal. Now all the focus and emphasis is on the Playoffs.”

Saban also noted that regular bowl games and semifinal bowl games “don’t coexist very well with the Playoffs relative to importance, how much attention they get.”

“But they are important to positive self-gratification for a lot of players, a lot of coaches, a lot of fans,” Saban said. “Expanding the playoffs would minimize that to a larger degree in terms of the importance of bowl games and the importance of players playing in bowl games. Last year you saw for the first time two players — two good players from two good programs — chose not to play in their bowl games because of their future.”

Smart tended to agree with his former mentor.

 

“Speaking as a former student-athlete, some of my greatest memories were those bowl games that mattered to a 10-win season,” he said. “You do devalue that as you increase the number of teams in the Playoff. You do devalue the end of the season. Think about the last three weeks of the season, the last two weeks of the season, the amount of attention and the amount of big games.

“The (committee) probably got it more right this year than ever with a lot of the championship games as de facto play-in games,” Smart added. “I think that’s the right way to go about it.”

“If we go to eight teams, I’m sure it won’t be long after that that you all will want to be talking about 16,” Saban said. “I don’t care if we have 68 teams in it, we’ll still have a two-hour show on who shouldn’t have got in, just like they do in (NCAA) basketball.”

Read the full comments, along with those from Riley and Swinney, in the linked BamaOnLine article above.