2024 12 Team Playoff Kick Off Times are Set - Where Does College Football (CFB) Go From Here?

[Jon Joseph]

Bill Hancock and his merry men and women have after many months, I'm shocked, finally determined and released the start time for the 2024/2025 playoff games.

 

College Football Playoff first round to go head-to-head with NFL with semifinals to be played on weekdays - CBSSports.com

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The College Football Playoff schedule will look drastically different upon the conclusion of the 2024 regular season

 

 

Some thoughts on this and a stab at where the CFB Playoff is likely to go come 2026 when ESPN loses its exclusive broadcast rights.

 

Play the Spring game vs an FCS opponent. And have the game count in the regular season standings.

 

For the most part, all P5 and G5 teams, at least those contending for a playoff spot, will start the season 1-0. I'd love to see Portland State as Oregon's annual spring game opponent and being paid in the process. Keep the cupcake money in state.

 

All teams play their 2nd regular season game on what is now referred to as Week 0. One idle week per team (did you know that in 2023, USC has two idle weeks with the 2nd coming the week before the conference championship game!) with half the field not playing in week six and the other half sitting out week seven. 

 

This would move everything up a week including conference championship games and first-round playoff games. This would eliminate some, not all, playoff games conflicting with NFL games and end the season before the 20th of January as is currently scheduled.

 

I know, before the 2023 season, it is wayyyyyyy too early to consider where the CFB playoff will go come 2026. Nevertheless here are one person's thoughts.

 

In 2026 the field goes to 16 teams. My guess notwithstanding all of the 'student-athlete' utterings, the money will be too significant not to expand. Via NIL or otherwise, the players will be paid to participate in playoff games.

 

No first-round byes for the top 4 conference champions. The six highest-ranked conference champions are in the field but seeding is based on where a qualifying team finishes in the rankings. Last season, Clemson and Utah would have received first-round byes but Ohio State and TCU would have not. 

 

How would a 16-team schedule work? To further shorten regular season games, adopt the above thoughts regarding shortening the regular season and adopt the NFL Replay Challenge rules and put a cap on the time a review can take. And allow games to end in ties in the regular season which was the case for over a century of CFB being played.

 

However, could this happen? The B1G and the SEC both expand so that both have 20-member teams. The playoff is contested solely between the Power 2 with some of the playoff money going to what are now P5 and G5 teams to keep the 'left-behind' teams from not going to court. 

 

Again, this is merely one man's thoughts. I hope the playoff will trend to being more inclusive than exclusive but I have my doubts.

 

 

[mikethehiker]

Appreciate your thought Jon.
 

Although we’d all like to see aggressive opponent scheduling, I have a feeling this new format will lead to conferences trying to minimize conference losses. Unless all conferences go to 9 conference games, this number will reduce to 8. 
 

And why play a conference championship game and give your 2nd best team an additional loss? Now that automatic qualifiers are in place, the goal isn’t one playoff team, but 2 and possibly 3 teams from your conference. 
 

This could backfire on the super conferences where it gets more difficult to crown a sole champion without a championship game. 

[Jon Joseph]

Enjoyed the comment.

 

I can see why a team would schedule down OOC but I think the opposite is happening if you look out at OOC schedules over the next decade. This is the case even in the SEC.

 

(On the other hand, Ohio State just paid half a million dollars to Washington to get out of a 2024/25 scheduled home + home series. Why, because Ohio State does want to take the chance of having to play twice on the West Coast; to play a team in addition to UCLA/USC. Just another intended consequence of the LA schools going B1G. Will Ohio State beg off of its in-the-future game at Oregon?) 

 

I expect the SEC will go to 9 conference games once OK/TX arrives in 2024. This will leave the ACC as the Power 5 outlier staying with 8 conference games. 'Justified,' in the ACC commissioner's POV, with Clemson, FSU, Georgia Tech, and Louisville playing an SEC opponent every season and the scheduling agreement with Notre Dame. I think this is chicken spit and will, hopefully, ding the ACC down the road. 

 

As to no conference champ game? This game is a money maker and with divisions gone or about to be gone in the case of the B1G, gives two P5 teams a more than likely top-25 game to cap off the regular season and improve the strength of the schedule. I think this will actually give the loser of the champ game a better shot at being an at-large seed.