The Tremendous Bowl is right here, however maybe not for lengthy. In a number of years, it could possibly be there — it could possibly be subsequent Sunday.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has expressed curiosity in including an 18th sport to the schedule and pushing the postseason again one week, with the Tremendous Bowl shifting to the Sunday of Presidents Day weekend.
That’s doubtlessly problematic for the School Soccer Playoff, which makes it worrisome for the game basically.
Extending the CFP to 12 groups achieved the dual objectives of creating the common season extra significant to extra groups and offering playoff entry to varsities and areas that have been typically excluded from the four-team occasion.
However two extra rounds of play turned the CFP right into a month-long occasion that started Dec. 20 and concluded Jan. 20.
What’s extra, the semifinals have been positioned on a nondescript Thursday and Friday; there have been two rounds of NFL playoffs between the CFP semifinals and title sport; and the championship was performed on a Monday that doubled as a nationwide vacation (MLK Day) and tripled as Inauguration Day.
Ohio State’s victory over Notre Dame drew 22.1 million viewers — a stable quantity, positive, however not near what the matchup might draw with a greater TV window. (The Michigan-Washington showdown in 2024, performed two weeks earlier, drew 25 million viewers.)
If the NFL strikes to an 18-game season upon negotiating a brand new media contract on the finish of the last decade, the January competitors calendar will change into vastly more difficult for the CFP.
The NFL’s common season wouldn’t finish till the second Sunday, with the wild card spherical (six video games over three days) on the third weekend and the divisional spherical (4 video games over two days) on the fourth.
The truth is, if the NFL merely moved its present TV schedule again one week to accommodate the 18th sport, the wild card matchup performed on Monday night time would begin on the identical time, and on the identical community (ESPN), because the CFP championship sport.
All of it suggests a revamped calendar by which the NFL sucks up all of the media oxygen and CFP video games are relegated to the nooks and crannies of the TV schedule that restrict viewers.
What ought to the game do with its marquee occasion?
It has been three weeks because the convention commissioners who run the CFP gathered in Atlanta to start discussing format adjustments that could possibly be applied subsequent season however, extra seemingly, will take impact in 2026.
Whereas the variety of groups (12 or 14) and the allocation of byes (to convention champions or the highest-ranked groups) are anticipated to obtain important consideration, the committee should tackle the calendar beneath the presumption the NFL ultimately provides an 18th sport.
Choice No. 1: Hold the CFP championship in its present window and negotiate with its media companion, ESPN, and the NFL to discover a workaround to the potential scheduling battle with the wild card sport on the identical night time. (That might imply shifting the CFP title sport to Tuesday.)
Choice No. 2: Stage the CFP championship the weekend earlier than the Tremendous Bowl, when there’s no NFL to look at and school soccer’s marquee occasion might have its decide of day and time, plus every week of hype unmatched within the sport’s historical past.
Skeptics level to the competitors calendar already being too lengthy, with an everyday season that begins in late August. Does the game really need its championship performed in early February?
Additionally, pushing the title sport into the empty window earlier than the Tremendous Bowl seemingly would require shifting the semifinals again, as effectively. There can be a lot time between rounds, the CFP can be simply forgotten by mainstream followers.
Choice No. 3: Transfer the CFP championship up by one week to keep away from getting swept away by the center of the NFL playoffs.
Higher but, transfer the entire shebang up a number of weeks and stage the championship on the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 yearly.
That is the very best resolution, by far, but it surely carries monumental complexities — particularly, it will require the game to untether itself from the New 12 months’s video games.
The Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Orange and Peach Bowls couldn’t moderately function rotating hosts to the quarterfinals on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 if the championship sport moved up one week, a lot much less two.
Would bowl officers comply with pre-Christmas kickoffs? Unlikely. So the CFP must restructure in a fashion that disconnects its quarterfinal and semifinal rounds from the most important bowls.
From a aggressive standpoint, that shouldn’t be an issue: Play each spherical on the campus of the upper seed, similar to the NFL, with the championship at a impartial website (the Rose Bowl). That might create spectacular theatre and next-level environments on campus.
Does the CFP have the willpower to interrupt freed from its longstanding relationships with the New 12 months’s bowls? In all probability not.
There are not any straightforward choices, not for a sport that’s each deeply rooted in custom and determined for each final TV greenback.
However this a lot is evident: The NFL is a gigantic drawback for the CFP that might get a lot worse in years to come back.
