NFL competition has not yet driven the first round of the College Football Playoff off of the third Saturday in December, but it will result in an adjustment to its schedule.
The first round of the College Football Playoff will for the second-straight year feature one game on a Friday and the remaining three on a Saturday, it was announced Tuesday, but the schedule is not completely unchanged from last year. ABC and ESPN will carry the first game of the Saturday, December 20, tripleheader at Noon ET, with the second and third games set for TNT and truTV at 3:30 and 7:30 PM ET, respectively.
Last season, ABC and ESPN aired the primetime game, with the afternoon windows on TNT Sports.
The decision to move the ABC/ESPN game to Noon ET is almost certainly because the NFL plans to compete in that primetime window this year. Last year, the NFL aired an afternoon doubleheader opposite the CFP, leaving the primetime window unopposed. The NFL has yet to announce the timeslots for this year’s Saturday doubleheader of Eagles-Commanders and Packers-Bears, but FOX — which will carry both games — has women’s college basketball scheduled until 3 PM ET that day.
Last year’s Saturday night window — Tennessee-Ohio State — was the most-watched of the first round with 14.68 million viewers. By comparison, the two afternoon windows that aired opposite the NFL averaged 6.6 and 8.9 million on TNT Sports.
The third Saturday of December is the first on which the NFL is legally allowed to schedule games under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which prohibits the league from scheduling games on Friday nights or Saturdays during the high school and college football seasons. In a call with reporters earlier this year, NFL EVP/media distribution Hans Schroeder referred to that Saturday as “an NFL day,” saying that the league has scheduled games on that day in 37 of the past 40 years.
When the College Football Playoff initially expanded to a 12-team format, necessitating a new first round, the NFL reportedly asked that the CFP schedule only two Saturday games. After the league was rebuffed, the quality of its Saturday slate increased sharply. This season will be the second-straight on which the league schedules a broadcast television doubleheader for that Saturday. Three years ago, it actually scheduled more games — a tripleheader — but all of them aired on NFL Network.
As was the case last year, all CFP games past the first round will air exclusively on the ESPN cable networks. This is the final season of the expiring CFP media rights deal. Under the new deal that kicks in next season, ESPN has reportedly committed to carrying one game per round on ABC. In addition, ESPN’s sublicensing agreement with TNT Sports expands next season to include two quarterfinal games (and potentially a semifinal as well).
