Conference commissioners, college football coaches and recruiting analysts try to put a positive spin on the two-team shadow that hangs over the entire FBS heading into 2019.
Clemson and Alabama. Alabama and Clemson. The consensus No. 1 and No. 2 teams in most preseason polls that seem destined for a fifth consecutive meeting in the College Football Playoff this season. Sporting News has that as its CFP championship game, which would be the fourth time it's happened in the last five years.
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Would another such meeting be good for the sport? Those same analysts, coaches and conference commissioners might say yes — but if you want to gauge the true temperature of the room from everybody else, listen to SEC Network analyst Paul Finebaum.
"I don't think it's a good thing at all," Finebaum told Sporting News. "None of us can affect the outcome of games, but in a perfect world having two Southern regional teams that are essentially in the same place, battle for the championship every year, I think is a negative."
Alabama is 67-6 and Clemson is 65-7 in the College Football Playoff era — and they are the only two FBS schools with winning percentages above .900. They've formed dueling dynasties that continue to dominate the sport at all three levels — through high school recruiting, on the field in college and in the NFL Draft and beyond. Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney are the only coaches in the game with national championships at their current school.
The three championship games featured unforgettable performances by stars such as Derrick Henry, O.J. Howard, Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence. How could that be bad for the sport?
"I say it's a negative, not because the games are bad, they're not," Finebaum said. "They're epic games. However, when you are trying to grow a sport and grow audience for the biggest event in the sport at a very challenging time — meaning you're in the middle of the NFL playoffs — it doesn't help college football one bit."
This is no longer a nice problem to have. College football has the two best teams at the top — the Playoff was created to ensure that happens — but Alabama and Clemson have created a gap with everybody else that is getting more difficult to close.
Alabama-Clemson's place in sports history
ACC commissioner John Swofford doesn't share the same outlook as Finebaum about the continued dominance of Clemson and Alabama.
"The fact that we have a playoff magnifies the dominance of these two programs because they ended up meeting each other," Swofford told SN at the ACC Kickoff in July. "Before you had a playoff, that wouldn't have necessarily happened decades ago."
There have been bowl rematches in the past. Ohio State and USC played in three straight Rose Bowls after the 1972-74 seasons, and UCLA men's basketball coach John Wooden led the Bruins to 10 national championships against 10 different opponents. This kind of repetition is rarely seen across any of the major sports.
Professional sports have seen rematches, too. The NFL's Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo Bills met in Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII. In MLB, the New York Yankees and New York Giants played in three straight World Series from 1921-23; the Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers played in four World Series in five years from 1952-56. The NHL's Montreal Canadiens and Detroit Red Wings played in the Stanley Cup Final three straight times from 1954-56.
Of course, the contemporary comparison for Alabama-Clemson has come from the NBA in the form of Golden State and Cleveland. Those teams met in the NBA Finals four consecutive times from 2015-18. But that ended when LeBron James left for the Los Angeles Lakers.
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Swofford sees the same cycle with Clemson and Alabama. It just happened to coincide with the beginning of a new chapter of college football when the College Football Playoff started in 2014.
"I admire excellence, and I admire consistency of excellence even more," Swofford said. "If you can have that excellence and maintain it in any sport, I'm all for it. It sets a standard for everybody else."
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Saban and Swinney would parrot the same line, too. But how long will college football buy it?
At that notion, Swofford chuckles.
"If it went on for 10 years or something maybe you would start to wonder what's going on here," he said.
The next two years, at least, could be spoken for.
How Alabama and Clemson reload their dynasties
Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was the Heisman Trophy runner-up in 2018, and is projected by SN to be the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. His contemporary at Clemson is not only projected to be the No. 1 pick in 2021 but is also considered a generational quarterback prospect. Naturally, they are the Heisman Trophy favorites for 2019.
Considering Clemson has never had a Heisman winner and no Alabama quarterback has won the award, it can be argued Tagovailoa and Lawrence are best those two schools have ever had at quarterback. They combined for 73 touchdowns and 10 interceptions in 2018.
"The thing that I would say, and it applies to Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers or guys like Trevor and Tua, 'A really good quarterback can clean up things that aren't perfect for everybody else,'" ACC Network analyst Tim Hasselbeck told SN. "So, if the left guard misses a block, the quarterback can play on time and stand inside the pocket and make a difficult throw. Everybody is talking about the touchdown and not the block the left guard just missed.
"Tua clearly has the ability to do things like that," he said. "Trevor does, too."
That's not the only thing that makes the short-term forecast for the rest of the FBS bleak. Neither Saban nor Swinney has slowed down on the recruiting trail.
The Crimson Tide claimed the No. 1 class according to 247Sports' Composite rankings in eight of the last nine seasons and sent more players to the NFL Draft than any other team this decade. Alabama has 10 of the 50 players on SN's Top 50 Big Board for 2020.
Clemson, meanwhile, has the top class of 2020 for now. That class features six five-star commits and could challenge for the highest-rated recruiting class of all time.
"I don't think we're at an unhealthy stage until other teams prove that we should be," ESPN analyst Tom Luginbill told SN. "At the end of the day, there's a common denominator between the two teams. They are better at quarterback and they are deeper and more talented than everybody else in the country on your offensive and defensive lines. It's no secret.
"You build a championship team from the inside out," he said. "That's what separates them from the rest. It's also the reason Oklahoma struggles to win a Playoff game."
Indeed, the Sooners are 0-3 in Playoff games — all in the semifinals — including to Clemson (2015) and Alabama (2018).
Can any other team truly stop these two?
Challengers to the Tide and Tigers
"The bar" is often mentioned when talking about Alabama, Clemson and everybody else. Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl CEO Gary Stokan believes that competition remains healthy within the other programs in the FBS.
"What people don't talk about is it raises the level of everybody else," Stokan said. "They are chasing them facility-wise. They are chasing them recruiting-wise. Trust me, Kirby Smart, Ryan Day, Jim Harbaugh, Chris Petersen are competitors, or they wouldn't be successful where they're at. They're not looking at Clemson-Alabama and saying, 'Oh, we're playing for second place.'"
That's hard to believe when you consider Alabama and Clemson are 19-1 against top-10 teams (when they aren't playing each other) in the last four seasons.
Mark Richt has the unique vantage point of seeing both teams in that stretch. Richt coached his last season at Georgia when the Crimson Tide beat the Bulldogs 38-10 in 2015. He was Miami's coach when the Hurricanes lost to Clemson 38-3 in the ACC championship game in 2017. Richt left the sport with a .727 winning percentage, but he addressed that bar when talking about the programs that were a step above his teams.
He does not consider it an issue.
"I think what's healthy is the best team wins," Richt said. “The best team plays hopefully for the national championship. I don't think anybody was complaining about that game last year. If you want to be entertained, then it's pretty entertaining."
BREAKING THE ALABAMA-CLEMSON MONOPOLY
Georgia | Oklahoma | Ohio State | Michigan | Texas A&M
So were the last two meetings between Georgia and Alabama. The Bulldogs lost 26-23 in the 2018 national championship game and 35-28 in the 2018 SEC championship game. Georgia is the No. 3 team across most preseason polls, but the Bulldogs haven't won a national championship since 1980.
Finebaum sees them as the logical challenger to both — especially Alabama. He also sees the same issue.
"Georgia-Clemson doesn't really solve the problem," Finebaum said. "It still seems like you're on a buddies' road trip in the South. You start in Tuscaloosa, stop in Athens for lunch and you're at Clemson for dinner."
If not Georgia, then who would draw the most interest against Alabama and Clemson?
"Michigan brings a lot to the table. They are one of the biggest brands in the sport," Finebaum said. "Nick Saban vs. Jim Harbaugh would be a delectable meal for any college football fan, just like Urban (Meyer) and Nick were a few years ago. It's hard to come up with a better matchup."
Do any other teams have a realistic shot?
"Ohio State is close. They are in the mix," Luginbill said. "LSU and Georgia, too. Auburn might have one of the best defensive fronts in all of college football, but their schedule is brutal. There are teams out there, but at the end of the day if you get a chance to play them but you go out and beat them."
'We'll see that game again'
Anybody can do that for one game. At least, in theory. But Luginbill went on to lay out the recipe for teams that try to beat Clemson or Alabama on a one-game basis.
"If you're going to assume you don't have the talent they have — 99 percent of the teams don't — then you are going to have to play your best game and they are going to have to help you," Luginbill said. "What I mean by help you is they are going to have to do something uncharacteristic of their nature: turn the ball over, give up a TD in the kicking game, have their quarterback get hurt. Something has to happen where they help you win the game."
Not many teams have been able to do that, and that has led to the forecast for the future of the sport. Debates about eight-team expansion pop up every January about the time Saban and Swinney hold their joint news conference before the CFP championship game. Last year's championship game — a 44-16 blowout in Clemson's favor — drew the lowest TV rating for a title game in Playoff history. The ratings for each Clemson-Alabama championship game dropped from 2015 (15.0) to 2016 (14.2) to 2018 (13.8). The semifinal matchup in 2017 drew a 11.4.
"Not only is that game challenging, but last year the biggest day of the year in college football — the national semifinals — the games were terrible," Finebaum said. "You look at the audience that day, do those people watching those two games one after another determine, 'Do I really want to come back in a week and a half?' The answer is not absolute."
That has put a strain on the sport, from the Saban era — which seemingly has no end in sight — to the increasing strength of Swinney's national presence. Finebaum will not deal in absolutes even if he concedes both brands are at full strength.
"I wouldn't say yes because I've covered enough games and sports and sometimes the slightest thing changes the trajectory one way or another for a program," Finebaum said. "I think anyone who wants to make absolutes is wasting breath. It didn't look to me like anybody was ever going to beat the Golden State in the NBA."
The Toronto Raptors, of course, won the NBA Finals this season. Kevin Durant left the Warriors, and a drama-filled NBA offseason followed. The biggest storyline this offseason came from the back-and-forth between Clemson and Alabama players at media days. Alabama linebacker Dylan Moses said Georgia was a tougher game for Alabama, and Clemson guard John Simpson said Notre Dame gave Clemson a tougher game than the Crimson Tide.
"I think Dylan Moses was reflecting things he has heard in that locker room from Nick Saban," Finebaum said. "Don't anyone jump in the air and say I'm saying Saban says this, but I know that program. I think what Nick Saban probably did after that game was find a way to get his players' minds off of that game."
The rest is chatter between both conferences, perhaps intended at spicing up what seems like an inevitable fifth matchup. Clemson will be the driving force behind the ACC Network, and the Tigers will play the first game on the network against Georgia Tech on Thursday.
"It's the gold standard," Swofford said. "Right now, Clemson is setting the gold standard. I think it's positive in every way."
Of course, the ACC commissioner is going to say that. Richt, however, is willing to state the challenge for the rest of the FBS and the existential debate for college football fans who might have to watch Alabama and Clemson dominate again.
"You can get tired of team or a certain couple teams, but you also deep down appreciate excellence," Richt said. "That's what this playoff system is all about."
It has been all about Clemson and Alabama. The commissioners, coaches and analysts will try to come up with a different answer up until the CFP championship game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Jan. 13, 2020.
Finebaum, however, sees the same-old conclusion. Will we see Alabama-Clemson V?
"I suspect at least we will, one more time yes," Finebaum said. "If you can assure me that Tua and Trevor Lawrence on healthy on Jan. 12, then I'm pretty sure we'll see that game again."
