The college football playoffs could be forced to face the NFL on television for the first time once the expanded 12-team field is in place. That possibility came to light as FBS commissioners continued to wrestle with the logistics of the expansion at a conference in Chicago this week.
The CFP will take “at least” two days to complete its first-round four games and quarterfinals, according to CFP executive director Bill Hancock. In each round, he will play two games per day, unless scheduling conflicts require more days.
The first round may not start until at least 12 days after the conclusion of the conference championship game. 2nd or 3rd week of December, depending on the calendar. In 2024, the first year the bracket will be expanded to 12 teams, these first round games will be playable on Thursday, December 19.
In addition to playing every Sunday, the NFL will offer “Thursday Night Football” through the end of December and “Monday Night Football” through the wildcard rounds of the playoffs. Beginning the third week of December, the NFL will also play on Saturdays until the conference championship game.
That leaves little room for CFP to set the stage for the first two rounds of the extended bracket. Since the BCS started in his 1998, neither a BCS championship game nor a college football playoff contest has gone head-to-head with the NFL.
“It’s not to our liking. [has] Matches will be played that Thursday night and Saturday, but we need to play these first round matches and we need to find dates for them.
Once the first round is complete, the quarter-final games will be played at least seven days later, likely around New Year’s Day. The semi-finals and the CFP National Championship he will take place in late January.
The NFL is in the first stages of an 11-year deal with streaming giant Amazon, the new home of “Thursday Night Football.” A source said CFP feels more comfortable going head-to-head with streamers than with linear cable and broadcast competitors.
Either way, it looks like CFP will have to face one of TV’s biggest ratings giants to play 11 games in the right order.
“You can guess, but one official involved in the CFP process said, ‘We can’t do that.’
CFP’s resistance to competition so far has led to mixed results. In 2015, the CFP insisted on having the semi-finals on Thursday night on New Year’s Eve. The audience rating has decreased by 40% from the previous year. Since then, CFP has only played on New Year’s Eve, which falls on a Friday or Saturday.
The CFP Steering Committee, made up of 10 FBS Commissioners and the President of the University of Notre Dame, remains committed to launching the playoff expansion in 2024. If not, 2025 will be the focus. This is the final year of his 12-year contract with ESPN for CFP.
After 2026, CFP will face another problem. Perhaps the biggest issue is revenue sharing. A playoff that triples in annual value from $600 million to perhaps $1.6 billion. Who knows what the conference landscape will look like by then? The SEC and Big Ten have already established themselves as “Power Two” with school rosters and monster media rights deals.
For now, the Commissioner is working on logistics scheduling. The start of the season may be postponed to week 0 to accommodate the extended playoffs. But on Thursday one person in the room called such a start “problematic.”
If the dates for 2024 and 2025 don’t match, the season traditionally starts on Labor Day weekend. So if the field expands either season, the CFP National Championship could take place later in January for him.
