College Football Playoff: Why 2024, 2025 dates in new expanded format are doomed to fail

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The proposed schedule for the first 12-team College Football Playoff, ingeniously semi-announced hours before the first round of the NFL Draft, is dumb. When this ridiculous proposal falls flat on its face, perhaps things can be fixed in 2026, when there truly is a blank slate and a chance to reimagine the college football calendar.

Last Thursday afternoon in Dallas, when college and NFL fans were zeroed in on the NFL Draft, Bill Hancock released information that there is essentially a schedule in place for the 2024 expanded College Football Playoff. This week, the CFP made it official: The first round will be held on the third weekend in December, with three games on Saturday and one on Friday. The three games on Saturday will be going head-to-head with Week 15 of the NFL schedule. The four quarterfinal games will be held over New Year’s, with three on Jan. 1 and one on New Year’s Eve. The semifinals will be held on Thursday, Jan. 9 and Friday, Jan. 10. And the national title game will be on Monday, Jan. 20.

Here’s why this is going to fail.

First round battles NFL games

Kicking off your first 12-team playoff by playing on a Friday night in December and then taking on the NFL all day Saturday? Good luck with that. College football knows it is fighting a losing battle with that one, especially with the top four seeds in the tournament not in action. If you are going to take on the NFL, ideally your best teams are playing. This is a losing proposition and will get things off to a slow start.

Quarterfinals on New Year's will work

This is the round with the fewest issues and will end up getting the highest TV ratings. Which is an issue in itself, because your championship and semifinals should be the games getting the highest ratings. Georgia-Ohio State last year proved New Year’s Eve can be a spectacular success for a playoff game, although it cannot be overlooked that the game was on Saturday. New Year’s Eve for the 2024-25 playoff will be a Tuesday, which is a work day for a good portion of the country. Three quarterfinal games on New Year’s Day, college football’s truly dominant day on the post-Thanksgiving calendar, will thrive.

Semifinals get overshadowed by NFL playoffs

Disaster waiting to happen. The Orange Bowl on Thursday night, Jan. 9. The Cotton Bowl on Friday night, Jan. 10. The NFL playoffs kicking off a day later. All the oxygen across every sports TV show and media outlet will be talking about NFL coaches getting fired/hired and the pending six wild-card matchups that await that weekend. The CFP semifinals will be an afterthought the entire week, leading into an irregular viewing window for sports fans. And the winners will be quickly out of the spotlight with the NFL playoffs starting about 15 hours after the CFP title game is set. 

It is also a logistical nightmare for fans from all four schools hoping to attend, going to another bowl site nine days after quarterfinals for a weeknight game.

Final again fights with NFL playoffs for coverage

Monday night, Jan. 20, 2025. I’m assuming nothing could really be done about moving this date because it was pretty much forced on the committee given the restraints of making the decision to expand last December. But this is not a good day. In the days leading up to the championship, the first, second and third thing on sports fans’ mind will be the NFL playoffs, the NFL playoffs and the NFL playoffs. The divisional round will play out, leaving the AFC and NFC championship games set on Sunday night before the CFP title game. These Monday night championship games of the playoff era have not been overly successful, with last year’s title game dropping 22 percent in TV ratings from the gripping semifinals.

In other news, Jan. 20 will be Inauguration Day and is the Martin Luther King holiday, after which everyone is getting ready to get back to school and work early Tuesday morning (definitely ideal for a Monday night telecast!). College football fans will obviously tune in, but the sport is not going to get maximum exposure for its most valuable commodity.

So there you have it. We’re going to get the final three College Football Playoff games on Thursday, Friday and Monday nights at neutral sites in January. And the American sports landscape’s most meaningful and gripping regular season will whimper out with its most vexing and confusing postseason. Because college football is all about tradition.

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How to fix this mess in 2026

There is hope for the 2026 season, though. The CFP television contract and the New Year’s Six bowl contracts all expire after 2025. We are locked into nothing as of now.

There are two guiding principles that should direct every decision moving forward: Get away from the NFL, and make the College Football Playoff the most important thing in the sport.

I proposed this in January, and I’ll propose it again: The regular season needs to be moved back two weeks into August. The tournament can then be a December Madness, with the first round, quarterfinals and semifinals on the first three Saturdays of December, and the national championship game on Jan. 1.

This gets away from the NFL on two fronts: You give yourself three entire NFL-free weekends to start the season (currently there is just one), and you don’t come close to conflicting with NFL playoff coverage.

Secondly, your most prized event — the CFP national championship — is played on college football’s No. 1 day. There would be zero doubt that the national championship game’s ratings would be the best they’ve ever been if held on New Year’s Day.

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College administrators have tried to shoe-horn the CFP into the existing schedule and around the NFL. It is time to start with the CFP as the No. 1 priority and work backward. But don’t hold your breath. Here are a couple of comments that emerged last week.

American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco: “You run into issues any time you try to do anything with the calendar. With Week 0, you have camps and they’d have to move earlier and they conflict with summer school. That’s a real issue.”

Summer school and training camps take priority over College Football Playoff scheduling?

More Aresco: “You move things earlier, do you want to play (league) championship games on Thanksgiving weekend when students aren’t there? Do you want to move Army-Navy?”

Ohio State-Michigan, Auburn-Alabama and a host of other big games are played on Thanksgiving weekend right now. I think they do OK with students on Thanksgiving break. And I love Army-Navy as much as the next guy, but is that going to stand in the way of the sport’s most important games?

SEC commissioner Mike Slive: “Understand that you are fitting in (league) championship games, final exams, coaching transition, early signing, transfer portal, NFL games, Army-Navy, commencement and New Year’s Day. There’s a lot there.”

There is a lot there. That’s why you have to prioritize. None of these things is more important than the CFP. The Early Signing Period can (and should) be either moved back to August or eliminated. Coaching transition, final exams and commencement are happening no matter when you have the CFP. Army-Navy can be moved up. And speaking of NFL games, again, the further you can stay away from the NFL playoffs, the better.

There is some talk of adopting Week 0 as Week 1 for 2026 and getting the semifinals on New Year’s Day. That helps, but doesn’t eliminate the issue of the championship game being swallowed by NFL playoff coverage. Given the rate of progress the sport generally makes, however, that is probably the best-case scenario, and maybe, just maybe, administrators will see the light someday and move that championship game to Jan. 1.

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Bill Trocchi is a senior editor for The Sporting News.