Will Tigers, Sooners be affected by long postseason layoff?

With so many college football games dominating the airwaves during the fall, it can be a bit of a shock to the system when it all slows to a trickle.

Last Saturday, the annual Army-Navy game was the only Football Bowl Subdivision matchup on the docket, and now all FBS action will be confined to bowls. And thus comes one of the stranger things about college football – the long delay between the conference championship games and the remainder of the postseason.

When Clemson faces Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 31, it will be playing for the first time in 26 days. That’s a long, long time to be out of a routine.

But what about the Sooners? The Big 12 doesn’t have a league title game, which means the last time Bob Stoops’ squad played was Nov. 28 in a victory over Oklahoma State. Oklahoma will have gone more than a month without competition when it lines up to participate in one half of 2015 College Football Playoff.

Talk about a momentum killer.

The positives, of course, involve rest and recovery. Virtually every player who saw quality time throughout the season is banged up and bruised. Not having to line up against an opponent right now is a welcome relief.

“We played ten straight, counting the championship games,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. “I think it’s great for these guys to get a little bit of a break. But it’s a new season, new beginning and we’ve got a formula that we believe in as far as how we get the team ready for a bowl, and that’s what we’ll do. Because it’s really not about planning for another game.

“You’ve got to win this game.”

Going into the Orange Bowl, both the Tigers and Sooners will basically start over. That’s true for all schools that play Dec. 31 and beyond. Swinney doesn’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.

“We’ll put everything we’ve got into how we prepare,” he said. “This is a time to get back to your fundamentals and your technique with your guys. It’s a time to really work on Clemson. Obviously, you’re preparing for the opponent, but you also want to develop your team. A lot of these young guys, (you) develop these guys, and give them a little bit of a head start for spring practice. So we have a combination of all those things as we get into bowl practice.”

There’s no other sport that has so much lag time between the regular season and the second season. Can you imagine the Super Bowl being contested a month after the conference championships, or March Madness beginning in late April?

But college football has always marched to its own drummer. That’s why for years there were lots of bowls but no playoffs, and that’s why now there are five major conferences but only four playoff spots.

Sometimes it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but neither Oklahoma nor Clemson will be complaining come New Year’s Eve.

“The message is, ‘Hey, it’s a new season and it’s a one-game season and it’s our bowl season,” Swinney said.

This story was originally published December 17, 2015 at 9:24 PM.