The NFL Is Reportedly Throwing a Tantrum That The College Football Playoff Scheduled Games on a December Saturday the League Has Used in the Past
With the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams in 2024, we obviously now have a handful of additional games to tack on to the postseason. The CFP has already released its schedule for the next two years, in which it will play the opening round of on-campus games on Saturdays that have been used by the NFL in years past when they weren't needed for college football beyond some largely meaningless bowl games.
And the NFL is apparently not happy about it.
Puck — The advent of the 12-team C.F.P., which debuts this year, has suffered through innumerable delays, including recent ones. The executives that I speak to enumerate the usual suspects: figuring out what the hell to do with those two orphaned Pac-12 schools; nailing an equitable way to distribute revenue to the conferences, which are increasingly becoming a duopoly; and perhaps the most prosaic challenge: scheduling. And yet, that final nit—the issue of landing upon a workable schedule, particularly for those opening-round games—is becoming an increasingly significant pain in the neck.
After all, those opening-round games are scheduled for December 20 and 21 this year. The latter date, as you surely know from consulting your Farmer’s Almanac, falls on a Saturday—and the NFL historically schedules games on that day, which is set up to be Week 16 this year. (Last season, the NFL scheduled two games on its Week 16 Saturday: the Bengals-Steelers on NBC and the Bills-Chargers on Peacock.) It’s the same deal the following year, too: The C.F.P.’s opening-round games are on Friday and Saturday.
Multiple sources have told me that executives in the league office were not happy about C.F.P.’s chutzpah in scheduling games that day, and they have been left scratching their heads as to why C.F.P. would encroach on their veritable turf.
Encroach on the NFL's turf? Saturdays belong to college football. You have been graciously allowed to use those December Saturdays because there weren't any college games of real consequence happening, but now there are. So we're taking December back and you're gonna have to deal with it.
Additionally, the NFL hasn't seemed to mind encroaching on college football's Thursday night games. Or the World Series. Or, most recently, the NBA's Christmas Day slate. But yeah, let's play the College Football Playoff on a Wednesday so the NFL can put Jags-Patriots on Peacock that Saturday. Give me a fucking break.
The CFP committee is in the midst of exploring some very dumb ideas right now, but I applaud them for this and forbid them to make any scheduling changes because Roger Goodell is mad about it. Put him in timeout in the corner and let him cool off.