For the second-straight year, the NFL has scheduled a broadcast network doubleheader for the opening Saturday of the College Football Playoff.
Fox Sports announced Monday that it will carry an NFL doubleheader of Eagles-Commanders and Packers-Bears for Saturday, December 20, which coincides with the first round of the College Football Playoff. It is not clear whether the CFP will schedule three games on the opening Saturday as it did last season, but even a reduction to two would still result in some overlap between the two properties.
The NFL has long scheduled Saturday games in the final weeks of December, but prior to the CFP expansion, those games generally aired on NFL Network and were not particularly high-profile matchups. The league last season changed its approach with a pairing of Texans-Chiefs on NBC and Ravens-Steelers on FOX, both of which dominated the competing CFP games.
This year’s games are perhaps even more attractive, even sans Kansas City. Both are classic NFC rivalries, with Packers-Bears the most storied of all NFL rivalries and Eagles-Commanders a rematch of the NFC Championship.
While the NFL justified last year’s marquee matchups in order to facilitate its Wednesday Christmas Day games, there is no obvious reason why games of that quality have been set aside for a Saturday, rather than a Sunday or in primetime.
The CFP announced more than two years ago that it planned to schedule three first round games on the opening Saturday of play in both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons. The NFL lobbied the CFP to reconsider, but was rebuffed.
Also Monday, Amazon announced that its Prime Video service will carry Eagles-Bears on Black Friday and Broncos-Chiefs on Christmas night.
Additional details on the NFL schedule will be announced over the next two days, culminating in the full schedule release Wednesday night. For up to the minute news on the schedule, see the NFL schedule release tracker.
