Is this something we can finally all agree on?
Tonight is the College Football Playoff National Championship game, with the Indiana Hoosiers and the Miami Hurricanes facing off at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.
The problem is, it doesn’t seem like anybody cares, because college football season should be over by now.
Back when the College Football Playoff was only four teams, the national championship game was usually wrapped up by the first 10 days of January. There were a couple of times that it spilled over onto the 10th or 11th, and one year it was held on January 13, but the schedule was pretty much the same: Playoff games on December 31 or January 1, and the championship game on the next Monday that was at least 7 days out.
Now though, with two additional rounds, the playoff schedule has (obviously) gotten much longer. The first round games are played before Christmas, the quarterfinals are in the New Years slots, and the semifinals are the week that used to be the championship game. That pushes the championship game back to late January: This year is the 19th, and last year was the 20th.
That’s entirely too late in the month.
By the time the championship game rolls around, the rest of the non-playoff bowl season has been wrapped up for two weeks, and much of the excitement surrounding college football has died down as fans turn their attention to the NFL Playoffs. It’s been a full 9 days since the last playoff game.
I mean, Indiana is in the middle of an incredible turnaround and one win away from winning their first ever national championship thanks to Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, and nobody seems to be talking about it because there’s such a long gap between the start of the playoffs and crowning a champion.
I know I’m not the only one who thinks the championship game should be held as close to New Years Day as possible:
And look, I get that college football is hampered by the NFL playoff schedule. This time of year, Saturdays and Sundays are pretty much exclusively taken up by professional football, and there’s no doubt college football doesn’t want their championship game to compete with the NFL.
But there’s still a way to fix the schedule to make it end earlier in the month so that it doesn’t drag out to the point that there’s no buzz for the game.
The last weekend of the college football regular season this year was the last weekend in November. The first weekend of December is for conference championship games, and the following Saturday has traditionally been reserved for the Army-Navy game.
This year, that meant that the earliest the playoffs could start was December 19 – a full month before the championship game. But if the playoffs were completed over the next four weekends, the season could have wrapped up a full week earlier than the current schedule.
Of course that would eliminate the New Years Eve games, and force some games to be played over the extended Christmas weekend. But there are already bowl games on those days: Heck, there are bowl games ON Christmas Day.
Another issue with the current schedule is the length of time that some teams are off before their first playoff game. The top four teams, which all get a first round bye, generally play in their conference championship game the first weekend in December and then don’t take the field again until the New Years games, meaning they’re off for nearly an entire month.
The extended break for the first four teams has frequently been pointed to as the reason that these teams have, over the past two seasons, struggled to advance in the playoffs. In fact, of the 8 teams that have gotten first round byes the past two years, Indiana is the ONLY team that’s won a playoff game. It’s simply too long of a break for these teams when their opponents get an extra game followed by a week and a half of rest.
Another solution, obviously, would be to wrap up the college football regular season a week earlier and push the entire schedule up a week – although that doesn’t really do anything about the large gaps between games. And that may mean the college football schedule doesn’t “officially” kick off on its traditional Labor Day weekend.
But I’d rather have the season start earlier and end at what feels like a reasonable time than be sitting here on a Monday, more than halfway through January, waiting for the national championship game.
I think this is something we can all agree on. Now we just need the College Football Playoffs to fix it.
