So, how about those College Football Playoff semifinals last week, huh? A thrilling Miami win, a dominant Indiana performance! Can’t wait to see those two unlikely-but-deserving programs square off in … wait, another week from now?
Yes, like a defensive lineman that recovered a fumble in his own red zone, the college football season started with unstoppable momentum and now, with the end in sight, is collapsing in a chaotic heap of its own making.
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Of all the woes that have bedeviled college football as it’s lurched into this new era — NIL, the transfer portal, disposable and interchangeable coaching staffs, a constantly-moving target of a playoff bracket — the most maddening is that the sport has managed to strangle all the momentum out of its best asset: the on-field product.
College football has always faced the challenge of navigating its last few weeks around two pillars: the academic calendar (stop laughing) and the holidays. Yes, since they still insist on calling players “student-athletes,” college sports have to at least nod in the direction of final exams. Add in the fact that, for most of sports history, leagues and networks have assumed that people would want to spend time with their families, not their televisions, over the holidays, and you have a couple challenges to the late-season schedule.
When Indiana and Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza take the field against Miami in the national championship game, it will have been 10 days since their dominating win over Oregon in the semifinal. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
But challenges are one thing. Mountainous immovable impossibilities are quite another, and in addition to final exams and holidays, college football also must navigate around the behemoths that are Tradition and NFL Football. Tradition is why college football must rotate its entire schedule around the bowls and New Year’s Day, and the NFL is why college football has to surrender the Saturdays it’s stacked up throughout the entire fall.
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Thing is, the NFL doesn’t give a damn about tradition, its own or anyone else’s, not when there’s calendar real estate to be claimed. The NFL even elbowed college football right off its traditional New Year’s Day date back in 2022 when Jan. 1 fell on a Sunday. Back then, in the four-team playoff era, the Fiesta (TCU-Michigan) and Peach (Ohio State-Georgia) Bowl playoff semifinals were played on New Year’s Eve, along with the Sugar Bowl. The Rose Bowl had to wait until Monday, Jan. 2, and even then it overlapped with an NFL game (the Bengals-Bills Monday Night Football game ultimately canceled because of Damar Hamlin’s medical emergency).
The result of all these competing forces is the dog’s breakfast of a schedule that the College Football Playoff has become. By the time this is all over, CFP games will have been played on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Indiana will have played exactly two football games between the Big Ten championship on Dec. 6 and the national championship 45 days later on Jan. 19. Two full weeks of NFL playoffs will air between the semifinals and the national championship.
This isn’t sustainable, and that doesn’t even factor in the madness that is the transfer portal opening and closing in the middle of all this, along with all its attendant coach movement.
College football’s calendar needs a complete teardown to the studs. There are as many ideas for the calendar as there are college football fans, but some combination of the following will almost surely happen:
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Changing “Week 0” to “Week 1” and starting the whole season a week earlier
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Extending the season to the second week in December, ending the Army/Navy game’s dominion over that weekend
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Altering traditional Thanksgiving week from rivalry games to conference championships (and potential playoff play-in games)
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Eliminating conference championships altogether
No matter what, the college football powers that be have to get the sport finished up earlier than late January. Every bit of momentum from a magical, ridiculous season will have bled away by then. The season has to end earlier, ideally before the NFL playoffs start, but absolutely no longer than wild card weekend.
Problem is, the NFL’s not going to give up the Monday night playoff game it’s held since 2021; college football missed the window on that one. But maybe a Tuesday night championship after the first wild card weekend would be better than waiting another six days…?
No matter which way the sport goes in the future, it’s still nearly a week to go until the 2026 national championship kicks off. Might as well spend that time kicking around ideas for the future.
