ROSEMONT, Ill. — Count Michigan State’s Bill Beekman among those who think more teams are needed in the College Football Playoff.

The Spartans’ new athletic director became another Power 5 conference voice to express his belief that the field needs to grow to eight teams from the current four-team format.

“My personal opinion is that expansion is probably inevitable. And I think at some level, that’s a good thing,” Beekman said Tuesday at the Big Ten athletic directors meetings. “I do think there are very real concerns about how long you make the schedule and how many games you play, and there are concerns about spreading that too much over two semesters.

“At the same time, it’s such a small number of teams. And so if you got two teams playing one extra game, it’s not 300 or even 50 or 60 – it’s two teams playing one extra game. I think in the greater scheme of things, I think its probably good for the game and good for the teams involved if you move it from four to eight.”

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MSU in 2015 and Ohio State in 2014 and 2016 are the only two Big Ten programs to make the College Football Playoff in its five-year history. The conference has not put a team in the four-team playoff the past two years.

The conference champion has been left out of the past three playoffs.

And that has left Michigan athletic Warde Manuel "open to the consideration" of playoff expansion.

"Anytime our Big Ten champion is left out of the playoff, I think, what, three years in a row? The champion three years in a row, that’s something that needs to be discussed," Manuel said at the meetings on Monday. "Because I obviously believe that you go through and you win the Big Ten championship in this league, you’ve accomplished something that desires to put you in position to play for the national championship.”

Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, who served on the College Football Playoff selection committee for two years, said playoff expansion is "worth looking at," but he echoed Beekman's concerns about expansion adding to the schedule.

"I think there’s a lot of problems around it, I really do," Smith said Tuesday. "I think you need to be sensitive to finals, because everybody’s finals weeks are a little bit different. I think you need to be sensitive to the holidays. I also think you need to look at the wear and tear. When we won the championship in the inaugural year, I’m not so sure our guys could’ve gone another game. We played Michigan. We turned around and went to the championship game. We turned around and played Alabama. And then you turn around and play Oregon.

"Most people don’t understand the toll that takes on a young person’s body. Because they’re not 27, 26. Some of those guys on the field are still 18 and 19. And you’re playing at the top of the pyramid against the best. I’d be a little bit concerned about student-athlete welfare from a health and safety view. So I’m not sure how it would work. I would hope there would be some gaps so that they could breathe."

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez, an inaugural member of the selection committee, has been vocal about his desire for playoff expansion. He continues to believe it should be on the table.

“It concerns me that everyone has not been included and, I’ve stated this before, I think we certainly should take a look at it," Alvarez said Tuesday. "I think we need to revisit the criteria that were set up to start with. We adjusted all of our scheduling accordingly. So, yeah, I think we need to take a look at it and it sounds like the commissioners have discussed it anyhow."

Beekman pointed to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament’s growth to 68 teams in 2011 after decades of expansion as a sign that it can work well while still not being devoid of problems.

“You can expand it to whatever, and whoever doesn’t make it, there’s some level of controversy,” Beekman said. “So I do think there’s gotta be some reasonable limit to the thing. To me, shutting out too many of the Power 5 conferences too often, I don’t think it’s wise decision-making.

“I think eight gets you to a reasonable number. There absolutely will be pressure at some level – there would be people who would have us play year-round. There’s always that slippery slope.”

Contact Chris Solari at csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.

Contact Orion Sang at osang@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @orion_sang. Read more on the Michigan Wolverines and sign up for our Wolverines newsletter.