SANTA CLARA, California — The rest of college football may very well be experiencing Alabama vs. Clemson fatigue.

The undefeated Crimson Tide takes on the undefeated Tigers in tonight’s College Football Playoff National Championship held at Levi Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers. The meeting, with kickoff set at 7 p.m., will be the third time in four years that the two powerhouse programs have played for the championship.

Just don’t expect the head coaches of the two best programs in college football to care about said fatigue.

“I mean, I’m not going to apologize for having a great team and a great program and a bunch of committed guys, and Coach (Nick) Saban is not, either,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. “I think the objective is to get the two best teams. That’s kind of the way it is. If that’s not best for college football, then why did we even do it? 

“Why don’t we just go back to the way it was and have bowl games and you put this team against this team, and it’s not necessarily the two best teams playing, and then at the end, like it used to do, you just vote on who you think is the best team? That’s what we used to have.”

Alabama head coach Nick Saban, who is looking to win his seventh national title overall and sixth with the Crimson Tide, wasn’t too concerned with people’s fatigue, either.

“Well, I don’t really get too concerned about a lot of programs,” Saban said. “I think there’s a lot of great things about college football that creates a lot of great experiences for a lot of young men, and I think the playoff has probably minimized the number of teams that really get the same kind of positive self-gratification from going to bowl games in other venues that have been really unique to allowing players to get a lot of positives from having a good season.

“Now there’s a lot of focus just on the playoffs. And that becomes the target that every program and every team is sort of aiming for, and it’s certainly the target that we have and a goal that we have as a program, and we’re going to continue to have.”

The Crimson Tide are playing in their fourth consecutive championship game and seventh over the past 10 seasons. In those title games, Alabama has defeated Texas (37-21 in 2009), LSU (21-0 in 2011), Notre Dame (42-14 in 2012), Clemson (45-40 in 2015), and Georgia (26-23 in 2017). 

The lone loss occurred against Clemson (35-31 in 2016) when DeShaun Watson threw for 420 yards and three touchdowns to nab MVP honors.

Under Swinney’s leadership, Clemson has become the best team not named Alabama in college football. The Tigers are 115-30 under the former Crimson Tide wide receiver and have appeared in the College Football Playoffs four straight seasons now and have done so in convincing fashion. 

Clemson routed Oklahoma (37-17) in the 2015 semifinals before losing to Alabama in the title game, then blanked Ohio State (31-0) in the 2016 semifinals before going on to win title game over Alabama. This year Clemson thumped undefeated Notre Dame (30-3) in the semifinals. 

The only CFP losses Clemson has suffered have been the two losses to Alabama, which includes last season’s 24-6 semifinal loss in the Sugar Bowl.

“When you play in a game like this, you expect to play against a great team, and Clemson is all of that,” Saban said. “Our players are certainly looking forward to the challenge of playing against a really, really good team.”

“Really excited about the opportunity to compete against the best team in the country on the highest stage,” Swinney said. “This is what we all set out to do, 130 teams, and you have two teams that have an opportunity to compete on this stage, and we’re thankful and blessed to have this moment.”

For Saban, these annual matchups with Clemson have become somewhat of a rivalry or at least the same familiarity that comes with an in-conference foe.

“Well, I think this sort of has become a little bit like someone you play in your league because we have played several years in a row now,” Saban said. “I’m sure they know a little more about us, we know a little more about them.”

Each season and each matchup presents its own set of challenges unique to that meeting between college football’s best programs. 

“I think that players still look at each game as a new challenge, and certainly I think that’s going to be important, because they’re a really good team that you’re playing against,” Saban said. “Which is what you should expect in a game like this.”

Swinney echoes that sentiment.

“Again, we both know that this is a game that both teams worked so hard to get to and there’s going to be a winner and there’s going to be a loser, and when it’s over, guess what, you start over for next year, and that’s the way it is,” Swinney said. “You don’t get to carry it over. You enjoy it in the moment and then you move on to the next one.”