SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — He’s not here.

No matter where you look, or how closely you look, Atlanta or Glendale, Ariz., Mercedes-Benz Stadium or State Farm Stadium. You can look high. You can look low. You can wait patiently as the parade of participants march behind podiums and walk away again. He’s not here. You half expect him to just casually walk into a room soon, with that look on his face that is equal parts bemused and annoyed, and just start talking. But that never happens.

He’s not here.

They are conducting a college football playoff beginning Saturday, extending all the way to Jan. 13, and the University of Alabama will not be a part of the festivities. This is the sixth year of the four-team playoff. The Crimson Tide has been a part of every one till now, ranked No. 1 half of those times. Not this one. Not this time. The Tide isn’t here.

Nick Saban isn’t here.

Suddenly, college football feels as wide open as it’s felt in years. Alabama doesn’t win every year — though it has won twice in the expended-playoff era, and five times overall under Saban. But the Tide is in the mix every year. If they aren’t the team lifting the trophy at the end of the national championship game, they’re the team on the tip of everyone’s tongues, in the forefront of everyone’s thoughts.

Clemson has won two national titles the last four years. They’ve beaten Alabama both times to do that. They’re here, and their coach, Dabo Swinney, is most certainly here, eager to chirp at any and all slights and disrespect.

No disrespect, though?

Clemson is a magnificent football power. Swinney is a magnificent football coach.

Clemson isn’t Alabama. Swinney isn’t Saban, although the stories have started to grow and multiply that whenever it is that Saban forsakes his Tuscaloosa, it’ll be Swinney, who played at Alabama, who will get the first call — even though he’s already making close to $10 million at Clemson and is, by far, the most popular citizen of South Carolina.

Now, in that small borough of college football in which both Alabama and Clemson reside, this is big news. Swinney made some headlines last summer when he talked about how difficult it is for him to go back to his home state anymore.

“I am kind of like Osama Bin Dabo,” Swinney joked to SiriusXM radio. “I have to navigate my way through the caves and back channels to make my way through Alabama these days.”

Ed Orgeron is here, in the semifinals, coaching the 13-0 LSU Tigers and the Heisman Trophy winner, Joe Burrow. If LSU can skip past Oklahoma in the Peach Bowl on Saturday, then the Tigers will play for the championship in New Orleans, in the old Superdome, and while that isn’t the same as facing LSU at Tiger Stadium’s Death Valley in Baton Rouge less than an hour away, that’s not a terrible setup.

It guarantees nothing; back in 2011 the Tigers were unbeaten and No. 1 and lost the BCS title game in New Orleans to — yep — Alabama. But if you’d care to be anyone in the sport right now, it’s probably best to be Coach O — Coach Eaux to the locals — who’s been fired at Ole Miss, fired at USC, yet somehow stands as the primary fill-in for Saban this year — the coach of the SEC representative, having survived the conference wars and ready to bring its special medicine to the rest of the country.

“You know, you’re expected to do this at LSU,” Orgeron told reporters Thursday. “I didn’t know it would happen so fast, in our third year. I think in your third year, any time you’re a new coach, that you have to show that your program’s going in the right direction, and we’ve done it.”

So Swinney and Oregeron are the heirs to Saban’s sash, and they lead the teams who are the betting favorites in Saturday’s games. But there is also Ohio State’s Ryan Day and Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley, both of who inherited their jobs when Saban-like mythical figures in Columbus and Norman — Urban Meyer and Bob Stoops — opted to walk away.

Both were given sizeable estates. Both have grown them wisely.

“There’s a lot of different ways to get opportunities,” Riley said. “A lot of us have had kind of different paths to get there.”

Now, they all get a crack at filling the absent chair. Saban’s not here. Alabama’s not here. They’re going to hold the playoffs anyway, crown a champion is spite of it all. It’s a wide-open chase to get two wins and hold the trophy aloft. We should enjoy every second of it.