‘The NFL Crushes Us’: CFP Expansion Extends To Big League Problem

With the NFL encroaching on Black Friday, the scheduling issue of expanding the playoffs has become increasingly complex for college football leaders.

DALLAS – Earlier this week, the NFL announced that it will play the regular season game on a new day each year: Black Friday.

For years, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was the post-holiday college football team game. In a way, Black Friday belongs to sports, a fabric of its existence, just like Saturdays in the fall, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.

These are the days of traditional college football.

Well, not anymore.

The NFL continues to encroach on land that has belonged to the Free Farm system for years. Black Friday is just the latest. The NFL began playing regular season games on Saturday in mid-December, expanded their playoff game to create an additional wild card game and began to dominate Thursday nights with the league’s streaming package on Amazon.

All this has college football executives rightly poised as they try to schedule an extra eight games into an extended playoff – all while trying to avoid a head-to-head confrontation with America’s #1 sport.

“You’re just trying to reduce all the ways the NFL is going to follow you,” says a senior CFP.

The CFP management committee, FBS 10 conference delegates and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick met for seven hours Thursday in Dallas in another effort to finalize details of the new 12-team playoffs. And while the NFL’s takeover of Black Friday had no effect on the playoff expansion, it unleashed yet another big-league dagger at its little brother.

One of the main issues the commissioners discuss seems very simple but is not at all: when do you play games? To that end, will you go head-to-head against the NFL?

The commissioners began to wrestle with the answer: Yes, you are.

“The NFL is crushing us,” says one commissioner. “And now Black Friday? Where does it end?”

However, there was some good news on Thursday. The commissioners came out of their intense meeting with optimism about the possibility of expansion by 2024 or 25, the first possible years. However, the window is closing quickly, and there are still plenty of issues outside the NFL, Explore it here SI. A decision should be made soon in 2024.

“Time is not on our side,” CFP CEO Bill Hancock repeated several times during an interview with reporters.

Thursday was the third in-person gathering of delegates since the CFP Chiefs Executive Board adopted the expanded playoff on September 2. They strongly encouraged the commissioners to find a way to implement the playoffs before 2026, when the CFP’s contract with ESPN expires. Many presidents, in fact, talk to SI Earlier this week About how they feel about expanding: They want it ASAP…or otherwise.

Says SMU President R.

“What you don’t want is for the presidents to meet again and make another decision,” says Washington State President Kirk Schulze. “There’s a clock ticking here.”

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, especially with the NFL involved.

“Every time you flip one stone, you start to get stuck in trouble. It’s more of a challenge than I could have imagined,” said Al Mutawa Commissioner and Judge John Steinbrecher, who chaired Thursday’s meeting.

During the meeting, Hancock and his staff posted a calendar on the boardroom wall detailing campus vacations and graduation ceremonies, and yes, the NFL’s private schedule. The commissioners set tentative dates for the four expanded CFP rounds, but nothing concrete. NFL struggles abound:

  • The first round will take place the third week of December, the same weekend that the NFL begins playing regular season games on Saturday. Up to three NFL games will be played on the third Saturday in December. The pair, which airs Thursday night on Amazon in NFL and college football, must go head-to-head against the NFL giants at some point. The commissioners realized that there was no other choice. They toyed with the idea of ​​holding playoffs early in the week into Wednesday, but that’s a long shot. Four college football first round games are likely to kick off on Friday and Saturday, the last against the big dogs.
  • The CFP quarter-finals are set for New Year’s Day. They will not be affected by the NFL games in 2024 and 25. There is now talk of three quarterfinals being held on New Year’s Day and a quarterfinal on New Year’s Eve or the day after New Year’s.
  • The semi-final dates are set about a week later, depending on the year. In 2024, that will be the weekend of January 10-12. And you wouldn’t know it, as this is an NFL Wild Card weekend, with a slew of play-offs spread out on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. Will college football play a semi-final midweek? Can. Thursday and Friday nights may be the best options. (The championship match is expected to be pushed back a week or two from its original schedule and remain on Monday.)

“What can we do about NFL dates?” asks CFP CEO Bill Hancock. “I am not prepared to report anything about what we have decided to do, but we are aware of it.”

College football wants to avoid playing at great depths in January, but that could be impossible in 2024 and 25. In the year 26, when a new contract is struck between CFP and media partners, things could look a lot different.

There is talk that the entire regular season could go up by a week, turning Week 0 into Week 1, sliding the Conference Championship on December weekends into Thanksgiving weekend. This drives the weekend competition for a week, too.

It offers more flexibility for such a narrow December window while ensuring that the sport doesn’t go too deep in January. They want to avoid trespassing on NFL property, just as the NFL trespassing on their property. In fact, the new 365-day college football calendar includes a note about lifting the waiver for Week 0 games, As explored by SI hereAnd the over here. It’s a sign that a turnaround in the regular season is coming.

For now, though, until the regular season has progressed, college football is stuck. It’s the face of the biggest beast in American sports, Goliath who refuses the farmer’s union help, the big dog that bites the hand that feeds him.

“They don’t care,” says one CFP. “We have to decide when to play our matches. If we compete head-to-head, they will get hurt too.”

More college football coverage:

  • “This is the bulls—!” The secret calls and heated arguments that led to the expansion of CFP
  • What are the signs of success for the second year of Josh Hubble’s career arc
  • Latest 12-team expanded CFP arc: Hey, Tulane! Poh Bay, Pennsylvania
  • What happens when group kits come for your players

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