(08-28-2026 07:56 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’m curious what the impact will be on the NFL schedule—will they still take a week off between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl? If so, this could be a great opportunity for college football.

With all the expanded CFP talks, the NYE/D bowl season could become the round of 16 rather than the quarterfinals.

Work the quarterfinals in around the NFL playoffs.

Pro Bowl weekend becomes CFP semifinals weekend.

Play the CFP national title the day before the Super Bowl.

With that timeline, no one loses their CCGs, Army-Navy still get a special time slot and there’s plenty of time to cull a 20-24 team playoff field down to 16 in time for the big bowls.

Oh - the NFL is 1000% going to continue having a bye week between the conference championship games and Super Bowl. The existence or non-existence of the Pro Bowl has no bearing on them wanting a bye that week. The bye week hype and buildup is totally intentional part of the process plus the logistics of setting up the biggest event in America.

The long-term NFL plan is to go to an 18-game regular season with 2 regular season bye weeks. This results in a total of 20 weeks covering the regular season. That likely means that the NFL will move the start of the season back to Labor Day weekend (note that the NFL is allowed to play on Friday and Saturday of that weekend - the Sports Broadcasting Act restrictions don’t start until the following week) and then the Super Bowl will be held on President’s Day weekend most years.

But to your point - that bye week before the Super Bowl is the single most valuable date for sports that no one has efficiently claimed. Any TV executive would LOVE to have the CFP National Championship on that particular bye date. Now, they don’t want it the day before the Super Bowl itself. There will be terrible “free media” coverage in the week leading up to it as everyone is focused on the Super Bowl - that’s Icarus flying to close to the sun there.

Your overall premise is on the right track, though. From a pure CFP revenue maximization perspective, you don’t want to cram more games into December. The market has *already* told the CFP that with the current schedule. The value is extending the season further into January. Everyone that keeps wanting to get the season to end closer to New Year’s Day or even on NYD itself aren’t thinking about this correctly at all.

From a pure TV perspective (and this is all that it’s about as I know that the season would be comically long in this scenario), the ultimate CFP schedule would be to have the semifinals on the day(s) before the NFC/AFC Championship Games (either a doubleheader on Saturday or splitting them on Friday and Saturday) and then the CFP National Championship Game on the Saturday or Sunday of the Super Bowl bye week. That would result in all weekend dates without NFL playoff conflicts and maximum viewership potential for all of them.

Super Bowl I had a week off before the game so this is something that has always existed. Even after the 9/11 season that resulted in canceling a week and moving the games to the end of the season, they pushed the Super Bowl back a week. I seem to recall there was one year they didn’t have a break but I may be mistaken.

(08-28-2026 08:23 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Finally.

It went from almost a real game in the Seventies to a total farce and a waste of time, not worth watching at all.

I think moving it out of Hawaii cost whatever appeal the game had left. It was a vacation trip for the players and their family. Yes, they still had to play the game but you’re in a tropical paradise. Playing in Orlando or at the Super Bowl site (where it looks like a consolation prize) just isn’t the same.

(08-28-2026 08:24 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-28-2026 07:56 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’m curious what the impact will be on the NFL schedule—will they still take a week off between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl? If so, this could be a great opportunity for college football.

With all the expanded CFP talks, the NYE/D bowl season could become the round of 16 rather than the quarterfinals.

Work the quarterfinals in around the NFL playoffs.

Pro Bowl weekend becomes CFP semifinals weekend.

Play the CFP national title the day before the Super Bowl.

With that timeline, no one loses their CCGs, Army-Navy still get a special time slot and there’s plenty of time to cull a 20-24 team playoff field down to 16 in time for the big bowls.

Oh - the NFL is 1000% going to continue having a bye week between the conference championship games and Super Bowl. The existence or non-existence of the Pro Bowl has no bearing on them wanting a bye that week. The bye week hype and buildup is totally intentional part of the process plus the logistics of setting up the biggest event in America.

The long-term NFL plan is to go to an 18-game regular season with 2 regular season bye weeks. This results in a total of 20 weeks covering the regular season. That likely means that the NFL will move the start of the season back to Labor Day weekend (note that the NFL is allowed to play on Friday and Saturday of that weekend - the Sports Broadcasting Act restrictions don’t start until the following week) and then the Super Bowl will be held on President’s Day weekend most years.

But to your point - that bye week before the Super Bowl is the single most valuable date for sports that no one has efficiently claimed. Any TV executive would LOVE to have the CFP National Championship on that particular bye date. Now, they don’t want it the day before the Super Bowl itself. There will be terrible “free media” coverage in the week leading up to it as everyone is focused on the Super Bowl - that’s Icarus flying to close to the sun there.

Your overall premise is on the right track, though. From a pure CFP revenue maximization perspective, you don’t want to cram more games into December. The market has *already* told the CFP that with the current schedule. The value is extending the season further into January. Everyone that keeps wanting to get the season to end closer to New Year’s Day or even on NYD itself aren’t thinking about this correctly at all.

From a pure TV perspective (and this is all that it’s about as I know that the season would be comically long in this scenario), the ultimate CFP schedule would be to have the semifinals on the day(s) before the NFC/AFC Championship Games (either a doubleheader on Saturday or splitting them on Friday and Saturday) and then the CFP National Championship Game on the Saturday or Sunday of the Super Bowl bye week. That would result in all weekend dates without NFL playoff conflicts and maximum viewership potential for all of them.

The question is how do you play a playoff that ends the weekend before the Super Bowl when they move to the Sunday before President's Day. If the QFs were NYD, that's 5 weeks roughly between the QFs and the NCG. Honestly, I think you'd need to have conference tourneys (6-7 teams for each P4 conference + a 7-8 team G6 tourney) in December followed by a 12 team CFP (maybe 14 teams) starting on New Years just to have a chance to make that feasible scheduling wise and even then, you're competing against the NFL playoffs unless some compromise is allowed scheduling wise that doesn't hurt the NFL. You're also running the risk of an up to 19 game season for players because then at that point, you're not shrinking the CFP below 12 teams because that loses games off New Years.

(08-28-2026 09:02 AM)GoBuckeyes1047 Wrote:  

(08-28-2026 08:24 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-28-2026 07:56 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’m curious what the impact will be on the NFL schedule—will they still take a week off between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl? If so, this could be a great opportunity for college football.

With all the expanded CFP talks, the NYE/D bowl season could become the round of 16 rather than the quarterfinals.

Work the quarterfinals in around the NFL playoffs.

Pro Bowl weekend becomes CFP semifinals weekend.

Play the CFP national title the day before the Super Bowl.

With that timeline, no one loses their CCGs, Army-Navy still get a special time slot and there’s plenty of time to cull a 20-24 team playoff field down to 16 in time for the big bowls.

Oh - the NFL is 1000% going to continue having a bye week between the conference championship games and Super Bowl. The existence or non-existence of the Pro Bowl has no bearing on them wanting a bye that week. The bye week hype and buildup is totally intentional part of the process plus the logistics of setting up the biggest event in America.

The long-term NFL plan is to go to an 18-game regular season with 2 regular season bye weeks. This results in a total of 20 weeks covering the regular season. That likely means that the NFL will move the start of the season back to Labor Day weekend (note that the NFL is allowed to play on Friday and Saturday of that weekend - the Sports Broadcasting Act restrictions don’t start until the following week) and then the Super Bowl will be held on President’s Day weekend most years.

But to your point - that bye week before the Super Bowl is the single most valuable date for sports that no one has efficiently claimed. Any TV executive would LOVE to have the CFP National Championship on that particular bye date. Now, they don’t want it the day before the Super Bowl itself. There will be terrible “free media” coverage in the week leading up to it as everyone is focused on the Super Bowl - that’s Icarus flying to close to the sun there.

Your overall premise is on the right track, though. From a pure CFP revenue maximization perspective, you don’t want to cram more games into December. The market has *already* told the CFP that with the current schedule. The value is extending the season further into January. Everyone that keeps wanting to get the season to end closer to New Year’s Day or even on NYD itself aren’t thinking about this correctly at all.

From a pure TV perspective (and this is all that it’s about as I know that the season would be comically long in this scenario), the ultimate CFP schedule would be to have the semifinals on the day(s) before the NFC/AFC Championship Games (either a doubleheader on Saturday or splitting them on Friday and Saturday) and then the CFP National Championship Game on the Saturday or Sunday of the Super Bowl bye week. That would result in all weekend dates without NFL playoff conflicts and maximum viewership potential for all of them.

The question is how do you play a playoff that ends the weekend before the Super Bowl when they move to the Sunday before President's Day. If the QFs were NYD, that's 5 weeks roughly between the QFs and the NCG. Honestly, I think you'd need to have conference tourneys (6-7 teams for each P4 conference + a 7-8 team G6 tourney) in December followed by a 12 team CFP (maybe 14 teams) starting on New Years just to have a chance to make that feasible scheduling wise and even then, you're competing against the NFL playoffs unless some compromise is allowed scheduling wise that doesn't hurt the NFL. You're also running the risk of an up to 19 game season for players because then at that point, you're not shrinking the CFP below 12 teams because that loses games off New Years.

Oh - for sure the logistics are wacky. I’m just putting in the “what do the TV network executives want” position without regard to the practical application of the calendar.

If I were to apply a calendar that doesn’t totally strain credulity, it would be we have a 24-team playoff and essentially change nothing about the overall college football calendar prior to the playoff:

(1) Everything stays the same, including keeping conference championship game weekend and Army-Navy a week thereafter as-is. If those CCGs instead turn into conference play-in games, then that’s fine, too, but the point is that the conferences continue to control the current CCG weekend.

(2) Start the 24-team playoff in the same weekend as the 12-team playoff now or spread those games over the course of 2 weeks (e.g. schedule games around the Army-Navy Game).

(3) Have the Round of 16 (8 games) on and around New Year’s Day, which is actually a way to replicate the sheer quantity of games around the holidays that we’ve had for bowl week up to this point. You could conceivably have tripleheaders on both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day most years and then you just need to fill in a couple of other evenings. As I’ve said a lot here, NYD and the days around it are the single best time to have a sheer *quantity* of playoff games. It’s not when you want just 1 or 2 playoff games like the way a lot of college football fans seem to think.

(4) The quarterfinals are where the challenge would be - there isn’t a great calendar with so many NFL playoff conflicts other than maybe having a whole quarterfinal week where there is a game each night from Tuesday through Friday.

(5) The semifinals happen on AFC/NFC Championship Weekend (either a doubleheader on Saturday or one game each on Friday and Saturday).

(6) National Championship Game on the Saturday or Sunday of the Super Bowl bye week.

People can whine about how long the season might be… but we’re kidding ourselves that we wouldn’t be watching this.

(08-28-2026 09:31 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-28-2026 09:02 AM)GoBuckeyes1047 Wrote:  

(08-28-2026 08:24 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-28-2026 07:56 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’m curious what the impact will be on the NFL schedule—will they still take a week off between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl? If so, this could be a great opportunity for college football.

With all the expanded CFP talks, the NYE/D bowl season could become the round of 16 rather than the quarterfinals.

Work the quarterfinals in around the NFL playoffs.

Pro Bowl weekend becomes CFP semifinals weekend.

Play the CFP national title the day before the Super Bowl.

With that timeline, no one loses their CCGs, Army-Navy still get a special time slot and there’s plenty of time to cull a 20-24 team playoff field down to 16 in time for the big bowls.

Oh - the NFL is 1000% going to continue having a bye week between the conference championship games and Super Bowl. The existence or non-existence of the Pro Bowl has no bearing on them wanting a bye that week. The bye week hype and buildup is totally intentional part of the process plus the logistics of setting up the biggest event in America.

The long-term NFL plan is to go to an 18-game regular season with 2 regular season bye weeks. This results in a total of 20 weeks covering the regular season. That likely means that the NFL will move the start of the season back to Labor Day weekend (note that the NFL is allowed to play on Friday and Saturday of that weekend - the Sports Broadcasting Act restrictions don’t start until the following week) and then the Super Bowl will be held on President’s Day weekend most years.

But to your point - that bye week before the Super Bowl is the single most valuable date for sports that no one has efficiently claimed. Any TV executive would LOVE to have the CFP National Championship on that particular bye date. Now, they don’t want it the day before the Super Bowl itself. There will be terrible “free media” coverage in the week leading up to it as everyone is focused on the Super Bowl - that’s Icarus flying to close to the sun there.

Your overall premise is on the right track, though. From a pure CFP revenue maximization perspective, you don’t want to cram more games into December. The market has *already* told the CFP that with the current schedule. The value is extending the season further into January. Everyone that keeps wanting to get the season to end closer to New Year’s Day or even on NYD itself aren’t thinking about this correctly at all.

From a pure TV perspective (and this is all that it’s about as I know that the season would be comically long in this scenario), the ultimate CFP schedule would be to have the semifinals on the day(s) before the NFC/AFC Championship Games (either a doubleheader on Saturday or splitting them on Friday and Saturday) and then the CFP National Championship Game on the Saturday or Sunday of the Super Bowl bye week. That would result in all weekend dates without NFL playoff conflicts and maximum viewership potential for all of them.

The question is how do you play a playoff that ends the weekend before the Super Bowl when they move to the Sunday before President's Day. If the QFs were NYD, that's 5 weeks roughly between the QFs and the NCG. Honestly, I think you'd need to have conference tourneys (6-7 teams for each P4 conference + a 7-8 team G6 tourney) in December followed by a 12 team CFP (maybe 14 teams) starting on New Years just to have a chance to make that feasible scheduling wise and even then, you're competing against the NFL playoffs unless some compromise is allowed scheduling wise that doesn't hurt the NFL. You're also running the risk of an up to 19 game season for players because then at that point, you're not shrinking the CFP below 12 teams because that loses games off New Years.

Oh - for sure the logistics are wacky. I’m just putting in the “what do the TV network executives want” position without regard to the practical application of the calendar.

If I were to apply a calendar that doesn’t totally strain credulity, it would be we have a 24-team playoff and essentially change nothing about the overall college football calendar prior to the playoff:

(1) Everything stays the same, including keeping conference championship game weekend and Army-Navy a week thereafter as-is. If those CCGs instead turn into conference play-in games, then that’s fine, too, but the point is that the conferences continue to control the current CCG weekend.

(2) Start the 24-team playoff in the same weekend as the 12-team playoff now or spread those games over the course of 2 weeks (e.g. schedule games around the Army-Navy Game).

(3) Have the Round of 16 (8 games) on and around New Year’s Day, which is actually a way to replicate the sheer quantity of games around the holidays that we’ve had for bowl week up to this point. You could conceivably have tripleheaders on both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day most years and then you just need to fill in a couple of other evenings. As I’ve said a lot here, NYD and the days around it are the single best time to have a sheer *quantity* of playoff games. It’s not when you want just 1 or 2 playoff games like the way a lot of college football fans seem to think.

(4) The quarterfinals are where the challenge would be - there isn’t a great calendar with so many NFL playoff conflicts other than maybe having a whole quarterfinal week where there is a game each night from Tuesday through Friday.

(5) The semifinals happen on AFC/NFC Championship Weekend (either a doubleheader on Saturday or one game each on Friday and Saturday).

(6) National Championship Game on the Saturday or Sunday of the Super Bowl bye week.

People can whine about how long the season might be… but we’re kidding ourselves that we wouldn’t be watching this.

24 teams in the CFP is just too many teams for me. The format you suggested makes sense from a TV standpoint, but that would suck for the top 8 teams not getting to host a CFP game and still having a long layoff, which is the exact issues with the 12 teams. Also a lot more neutral site games, which may see attendance issues, not that that overly matters.

I guess if I had to propose an alternate, I'd add a 13th game to the regular season (P4 required to play 12 P4 opponents with exceptions for 1 traditional, annual G6 rival), which would move rivalry week to the 1st weekend of December though I'd imagine many rivalry games would be spread out from Black Friday to the 1st Saturday in December. I'd want to use the 2nd weekend for a P4 play-in game in place CCGs or the 13-20 in CCG venues along with a potential G6 play-in game. 3rd weekend for Army-Navy and Heisman. Then have the 16 team CFP start around New Years. Still not the greatest.

I wouldn't be opposed of maybe moving the Natty to the Saturday of the wild card round when they expand to 18 games and 2 byes (maybe see if the NFL and ESPN are okay with a NFL playoff doubleheader on ABC before the CFP Natty in primetime) or move it to the MNF after the wild card with the NFL moving to a Saturday & Sunday tripleheader, if logistics are too tight, while trying to keep the QFs on New Years. Maybe that is the route the commissioners are trying to go with a 16-24 team CFP (personally, keep it at 16-20 teams if expanding beyond 12-14 teams, maybe the 13 game regular season). It's kinda tight, but not the worst. It would allow teams to host a CFP game at least.

My timeline of events, using 2026-2027 as an example

CFP—
2nd & 3rd weekends of Dec — winnow CFP field down to 16 (from 20-24)
12/31 - 1/2 — round of 16 at major bowl sites (2 games on NYE, 3 on NYD, 3 on SAT closest to NYD)
1/29 - 1/30 CFP Quarters (1 FRI, 3 SAT)
2/6 CFP Semis
2/13 CFP Title

NFL—
1/16 - 1/18 NFL Wildcard Weekend (6 games)
1/23 - 1/24 NFL divisional Weekend (4 games)
1/31 NFL conference Weekend (2 games)
2/7 Null
2/14 Super Bowl

The 1 month lull kind of stinks but it’s kind of necessary in order to air in good tv slots, free of NFL competition. On the bright side, it gives teams the opportunity to get healthy so that the final 8 teams are truly putting the best teams on the field that they can.

(08-28-2026 12:59 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  My timeline of events, using 2026-2027 as an example

CFP—
2nd & 3rd weekends of Dec — winnow CFP field down to 16 (from 20-24)
12/31 - 1/2 — round of 16 at major bowl sites (2 games on NYE, 3 on NYD, 3 on SAT closest to NYD)
1/29 - 1/30 CFP Quarters (1 FRI, 3 SAT)
2/6 CFP Semis
2/13 CFP Title

NFL—
1/16 - 1/18 NFL Wildcard Weekend (6 games)
1/23 - 1/24 NFL divisional Weekend (4 games)
1/31 NFL conference Weekend (2 games)
2/7 Null
2/14 Super Bowl

The 1 month lull kind of stinks but it’s kind of necessary in order to air in good tv slots, free of NFL competition. On the bright side, it gives teams the opportunity to get healthy so that the final 8 teams are truly putting the best teams on the field that they can.

No way this schedule would ever work. The NFL, the CFP, and the Media would reject it. The NFL does not want competition with their event. The CFP does not want to go up against the Super Bowl. The Media, which has many members covering both events, would not be happy with this arrangement. They can't be in two places at once and if forced to choose, they will go with the Super Bowl. ESPN, which is covering both events this season, would be a strong NO.

The Super Bowl is a week-long party for the fans and the media leading up to the game. The networks spend the week hyping the game and then the day after the game, talk incessantly about the game. The same with the CFP championship game. With your schedule, Sunday morning on ESPN they will be doing traditional Super Bowl pregame coverage instead of talking about the CFP CCG the night before. These two games need to be weeks apart. The CFP will want to avoid the NFL to the extent possible.

I can’t see any reason why the FBS and NFL can’t crown their champions on the same weekend. The media have enough staff to support a presence at both events.

(08-28-2026 03:37 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I can’t see any reason why the FBS and NFL can’t crown their champions on the same weekend. The media have enough staff to support a presence at both events.

Could it happen? Anything can technically happen in theory.

Does anyone involved want that to happen? Absolutely not. It makes little sense to crown the college football champion when they can do it totally free from Super Bowl competition a week earlier.

Putting aside the TV interests, simply follow the money. There is a ton of overlap between NFL and CFP sponsors and other interested parties - the shoe companies, car companies, tech executives, media executives, talent agencies, etc. ALL of those people are at Super Bowl week - it’s essentially the closest thing to a mass convention for the entire sports world (not just football). You can’t sell premium corporate suites and luxury seats to parties for a CFP National Championship Game that is the day before the Super Bowl because everyone that is important that you’re trying to sell to will be AT the Super Bowl. Every venue operator and host city in the country that’s worth anything wants to keep those two events at least a week apart. The Super Bowl is so much more unfathomably important compared to the CFP that this can’t even be a consideration. ESPN’s own leadership or any other network couldn’t even be at the CFP final - they and every other NFL partner spends Super Bowl week meeting with their biggest advertisers and kissing the ring of Roger Goodell.

Plus, in my fantasy world, there will be a year where Illinois makes the national championship game and the Bears make the Super Bowl, and it is mandated that I attend both of those. This is the law in my fantasy world and we cannot have those days back-to-back!

(08-28-2026 03:37 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I can’t see any reason why the FBS and NFL can’t crown their champions on the same weekend. The media have enough staff to support a presence at both events.

You just don't get it. The Super Bowl is a huge media event by itself with over 5,000 credentialed media members in attendance, including foreign correspondents. The game is broadcast in over 100 countries. ESPN plans to build a large broadcast and fan experience on Santa Monica Beach during the week leading up to Super Bowl LXI, starting with Radio Row from Santa Monica beach.

Most of ESPN’s daily studio programming, including morning shows through primetime, is expected to originate from multiple sets positioned along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier beginning Feb. 8 through February 13. There will be current players, former players, current coaches, former coaches, celebrities and fans on Radio Row. Then you have the various fan experiences. It is a massive multi-day entertainment festival leading up to Sunday.

Every news outlet will be there. The Super Bowl sucks the energy out of everything. ESPN wants to promote the CFP because they have a ton of money invested in it, but they have even more money in the Super Bowl. The CFP and Las Vegas and ESPN would want their own week to celebrate the championship game. It is about maximizing profits for both events, and it is just common sense.

(08-28-2026 07:56 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’m curious what the impact will be on the NFL schedule—will they still take a week off between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl? If so, this could be a great opportunity for college football.

With all the expanded CFP talks, the NYE/D bowl season could become the round of 16 rather than the quarterfinals.

Work the quarterfinals in around the NFL playoffs.

Pro Bowl weekend becomes CFP semifinals weekend.

Play the CFP national title the day before the Super Bowl.

With that timeline, no one loses their CCGs, Army-Navy still get a special time slot and there’s plenty of time to cull a 20-24 team playoff field down to 16 in time for the big bowls.

Interesting idea. Now just figure how that works for the transfer portal and players that are transferring in the 2nd semester that starts in January for most schools.