The inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff is in the books, and while there are any number of tweaks — or even overhauls — that can be made to the on-field product, the purview of this website is media coverage. With that in mind, what changes are already set in motion, and which ones should be considered?
Changes that are already in motion
Starting in 2026-27, the CFP National Championship will be simulcast on ABC each year, ending a 16-year stretch in which college football’s national champion has been crowned exclusively on cable. (Not even on streaming; ESPN+ did not carry Monday’s game.) While viewership has been largely resilient to the sharp decline in cable subscriptions in recent years — ESPN is reportedly now in just 65 million homes — it is fair to say the CFP annually costs itself a considerable number of viewers by airing exclusively on cable.
The new deal solves that problem, and per reporting by Andrew Marchand of The Athletic last year, also includes an understanding that at least one game per round will air on broadcast television. ABC already carried two of the four first round games this season.
There will still be cable-exclusive games, including more on TNT — which starting in 2026-27 is set to carry a pair of quarterfinal round games as part of its sub-licensing agreement with ESPN. Given the uncertainty surrounding the playoff format at that point (no format has been agreed to beyond next season), those may or may not be New Year’s adjacent bowl games.
Changes that are worth considering
Accommodate the NFL
The most pressing change to the CFP schedule is going to be avoiding the NFL. For as much as the NFL intrudes onto other sports’ territory, it is worth noting that the new first round of the CFP is intruding onto the NFL’s turf — playing on a December Saturday that has long belonged to NFL games.
The NFL wanted the CFP to schedule only two Saturday games in the first round, a request that was rebuffed. That the league then scheduled two marquee games for broadcast television to air opposite those first round matchups — as opposed to the usual Saturday fare of semi-decent games on NFL Network — may or may not have been a coincidence. The NFL dominated the CFP head-to-head, and while there is no shame in losing to the nation’s most popular sports league, it is also the case that the two games opposite the NFL were easily the least-watched of the playoff.
Going forward, the CFP would be wise to consider accommodating the NFL. Perhaps that means two games on Saturday and the other two on Friday. A Friday afternoon window is certainly far from ideal, but probably a better ratings play than Saturday opposite the NFL. It may even be worth considering moving the first round up a few days and having those games played midweek to avoid the NFL altogether.
Abandon New Year’s Eve once and for all
It may be scarcely remembered now, but the initial decision to schedule most of the College Football Playoff semifinals for New Year’s Eve was highly controversial and quickly abandoned. The argument went that New Year’s Eve was the worst of all worlds — a workday on which afternoon games were untenable, and a night of partying that would overshadow any primetime matchup. Those concerns were borne out as early as year two of the playoff, and a decision was soon made that the CFP would avoid New Year’s Eve unless the date fell on a Friday or Saturday.
That has gone by the wayside in the expanded playoff era, with the first game of the quarterfinals airing on a New Year’s Eve Tuesday. That game — Penn State’s ho-hum win over Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl — was easily the least-watched of the quarterfinals with fewer than 14 million viewers, an audience that even trailed one of the first round games.
Notably, the rescheduled Sugar Bowl averaged more viewers in an afternoon window on January 2 — nearly 16 million. Having three quarterfinals on New Year’s Day and the fourth in primetime on January 2 may be the more sensible move going forward.
Reduce the number of off days before the national title game
If one wants to maintain momentum from one round to the next, a ten-day layoff between the national semifinals and title game seems on the excessive side. Between Ohio State’s win over Texas in the Cotton Bowl January 10 and their win over Notre Dame in the title game Monday night, the entire first two rounds of the NFL playoffs were completed.
An easy way to reduce the layoff would be to move up the national title game to Friday night, though that might be cutting things a bit close for the team playing the prior Friday. (Saturday would be ideal, but the NFL owns that day during its postseason.)
It bears noting that Friday and Saturday are the two least-watched nights of the week, but the lone Friday night title game of the BCS era — Ohio State’s contested win over Miami in 2003 — still ranks among the most-watched college football games on record. A 22-year example may not be the most relevant to the current era of television, but it is at least some evidence that viewers will tune in for a title game even on otherwise low-viewership nights.
What a modified schedule might look like
Using next season as a guide, here is what a modified schedule would look like using the above recommendations.
First round
— Friday, December 19: Games at 4:00 and 8:00 PM (Currently one game)
— Saturday, December 20: Two games, times depending on the NFL schedule. (Currently three games)
Quarterfinals
— Thursday, January 1: Orange, Rose and Sugar Bowls
— Friday, January 2: Cotton Bowl in primetime (currently 12/31)
Semifinals
— Thursday, January 8: Fiesta Bowl (no change)
— Friday, January 9: Peach Bowl (no change)
National Championship
— Friday, January 16 (currently Monday, January 19)
A more radical suggestion (made often on social media) would be to move up the first round to the week of the Army-Navy game, play the quarterfinals in mid-December, and restore the semifinals to their previous New Year’s adjacent date. That would resolve the NFL conflict for the first round — the NFL is legally prohibited from playing Saturday games before the third week of December — but the same issue would arise for the quarterfinals, unless they were spread around to avoid the NFL on Thursdays, Saturdays and Mondays.
Again using next season as a guide, here is what a modified schedule would look like using the more radical recommendations.
First round
— Friday, December 12: Game at 8:00 PM (Currently 12/19)
— Saturday, December 13: Three games (Currently 12/20)
Quarterfinals
— Friday, December 19: Cotton Bowl in primetime (currently 12/31)
— Saturday, December 20: Orange, Fiesta* and Peach* Bowls (currently 1/1)
Semifinals
— Thursday, January 1: Rose* and Sugar* Bowl (currently 1/8 and 1/9)
National Championship
— Friday, January 9 (currently Monday, January 19)
* Presumably, any change that would result in the quarterfinals moving up to December would result in a change in which bowl games serve as host. The assumption here is that the Rose and Sugar bowls would retain their New Year’s Day slot and thus host semifinals.
