How to make the College Football Playoff better | Don Williams

Posted by author January 23, 2025 Football

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We watched from start to finish Monday night as Ohio State beat Notre Dame for the national championship, bringing an end to the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

All in all, I’d call the new format a success. Way more teams got their chance than in the past, four-team playoff, and that made everyone happy. Everyone but Alabama and Crimson Tide backers, that is. Small price to pay. If the CFP goes to 16 teams, there’ll still be a beef about the first team out, whomever that might be.

First-round games at campus sites added a layer of excitement, the fans at Texas, Ohio State, Penn State and Notre Dame getting to experience the thrill of a postseason home game. Even before the semifinals, there was a down-to-the-wire thriller with the Longhorns‘ double-overtime win over Arizona State.

And on Wednesday, ESPN reported viewership for the title game was 22.1 million, the most watched non-NFL sporting event over the past year. The peak for a 15-minute period was 26.1 million people tuned in. All the talk about loosened transfer restrictions and name-image-likeness pay killing college football is just that, talk. The game, no matter how it evolves, has too strong a pull.

Would you rather watch the World Pickleball Championships? The National Cornhole League maybe? Didn’t think so.

Still, college football’s postseason format can get better.

Add me to the list of folks who believe the CFP needs to end sooner. Dragging the finale this deep into January feels awfully protracted. Think of it this way: The Ohio State-Notre Dame game came 25 days after the Texas Tech football season ended at the Liberty Bowl, and the Red Raiders‘ season was not a bad one. They won eight games. Teams who didn’t make a bowl game have been done playing for more than seven weeks.

Feels like the NFL playoffs and college basketball — the NBA and the NHL, if you’re so inclined — ought to be top of mind at this spot on the calendar.

When I was a kid, we always looked forward to New Year’s Day. It was the pinnacle of college football. You had the Cotton Bowl around lunch time, the Rose Bowl from late afternoon into evening and the Orange Bowl after dark. The Sugar Bowl spot varied, from New Year’s Eve in the early 1970s back to its traditional spot on New Year’s Day, the kickoff during the day some years and then at night.

Halftime of the Orange Bowl was the worst. After two weeks off for Christmas fun and frivolity, you knew it was back to school the next morning.

That’s the college football we grew up on. Regular season from September through November, the bowl games packed mostly into the last two weeks of December and everything building to a climax with the big four on New Year’s Day.

Joel Klatt would like to bring that back. The college football analyst this week tweeted: “We should be playing the National Championship on Jan. 1. Every year…OUR DAY…make it special.”

I agree with the sentiment and the overarching theme. I’m not sure how to get there. The early national signing day has become the real one for all practical purposes, and a 20-day transfer portal window right after conference championship games crowds the December calendar even more. Can’t push the portal back too much — unless you want to eliminate it altogether — because players must have time to relocate to their new schools before classes resume.

We’re with Klatt, though. We’re going to be watching the title game either way, but we’d rather watch it on New Year’s Day.