College football’s bowl schedule will feature a number of changes this year.
The college football bowl season will begin on a Friday for the first time in recent memory and include substantially more games after New Year’s Day, according to a schedule released Thursday by ESPN. The bowl season starts Friday, December 20, with the Bahamas Bowl on ESPN and the Frisco Bowl on ESPN2.
With December 20 marking the latest start to the bowl season since 2014, a full five bowl games will air between New Year’s Day and the January 13 national championship. The Birmingham and Gator bowls are set for January 2, the Idaho Potato Bowl for January 3, the Armed Forces Bowl for January 4, and the Mobile Bowl for January 6.
Last season, zero games aired between New Year’s Day and the championship game.
In a change first announced three years ago, the College Football Playoff semifinals — at the Peach and Fiesta bowls — are scheduled for Saturday, December 28. Those games will be preceded by the Cotton Bowl at Noon ET.
The Orange Bowl, which was originally set to air at 1 PM on New Year’s Day, has been moved back to December 30 in primetime. As a result, the Outback Bowl will precede the Rose Bowl on ESPN New Year’s Day.
Other changes to the bowl schedule include an ABC tripleheader on December 21, with the Las Vegas Bowl airing on the network in primetime. It will be the first primetime bowl game on ABC since 2006. The move would seem to be part of ESPN’s broader rediscovery of ABC, which is also carrying the Pac-12 Championship on a Friday night this year — its first weeknight college football game since 2006.
[News from ESPN PR 5.23]
