Here are the big losers if the College Football Playoff is expanded to include more teams

You knew it was coming. As soon as the consternation concluded over whether Alabama or Ohio State should fill out the four-team College Football Playoff field, the discussion immediately turned to expanding to an eight-team tournament.

The arguments for expanding the field are many. More teams would have a crack at not only experiencing the playoffs but at winning a national championship. Revenue from television contracts would expand the pool of money that trickles down to the participating teams and their respective conferences.

More teams. More excitement. More interest in college football.

Conversely, there would be some concern about the toll taken on players and their bodies by adding games. That leaves boosters and fans of participating teams as the forgotten ones in all of this talk.

“When is enough enough?” asks Sam Head, a 49-year-old financial planner in Columbia, S.C.

Head serves as the perfect example of how an additional round of playoffs would affect fans since he has closely followed his favored Clemson Tigers in each of the past three College Football Playoffs, shelling out thousands of dollars along the way.

“It’s crazy how big this has all gotten,” Head says.

Then there is Nick Milasnovich, He played basketball at Clemson from 1962 until graduating in 1964 and has been a member of IPTAY, the athletic department’s booster organization, for 52 years. Milasnovich, 75, says he has been aged out of the football playoffs even though he is in outstanding health.

“The younger crowd is better suited for these games,” Milasnovich says. “The only problem with that (for younger boosters) is affordability.”

Head is a 1990 Clemson graduate and a two-decade member of IPTAY. Even before the playoffs each year, Head opens his wallet wide to pull for his Tigers. With a $10,600 annual contribution to IPTAY, Head keeps his status as a Heisman Trophy donor and with it the right to purchase 12 seats at Memorial Stadium for Clemson’s seven home games each season.

Milasnovich shells out $7,000 annually in IPTAY donations and ticket prices for eight seats, two of which are located halfway up the visitors’ side on the 50-yard line next to Head in Section UO, Row U.

No fans have been more thrilled by Clemson’s back-to-back-to-back trips to the postseason than Head and Milasnovich. Head has missed only one game in the Tigers’ run to three consecutive ACC championships, a national runner-up finish and a national title a season ago. Milasnovich has not attended a single postseason game the past three seasons, preferring the comfort and affordability of home viewing on TV.

Each of the postseasons will cost Head an estimated $7,500 to $10,000. The 2015 postseason included trips to follow the team in Charlotte, Miami and Glendale, Ariz. In 2016, Clemson played in Orlando, Glendale and Tampa. This season, the Tigers won the ACC title in Charlotte and will play the national semifinals in New Orleans with a possible title game in Atlanta.

It obviously helps Head’s budget for games to be played in Charlotte or Atlanta. But it still eats into time commitments at his business and at home. So, Head cringes at the thought of an additional round of playoffs.

Expansion cannot happen for next season, but for the sake of a hypothetical, let’s decide that an additional round to include eight teams would be played on the home fields of the higher-seeded teams. Let’s also say that Clemson goes in as an eight-seed in 2018 and is slotted to play its opening-round game at Stanford.

Under that scenario, Clemson fans would be asked to follow their team to Charlotte for the ACC championship, to Palo Alto, Calif., for the first round of the playoffs, to either Dallas for the Cotton Bowl or Miami for the Orange Bowl, and finally to San Francisco for the national championship game.

“When you start doing all this, you’re not going to get fan support because we’re not going to go to everything,” Head says. “We’re not going to go to everything. It’s too much. It’s too much.”

Fans are the last to be considered in any playoff expansion talk as college football games move closer and closer to being mere programing for television shows. And, really, who is concerned about the studio audience?

This story was originally published December 21, 2017 at 12:55 PM with the headline "Here are the big losers if the College Football Playoff is expanded to include more teams."