2024 CFP Schedule News
Looking way ahead to the 2024 college football playoffs, especially the opening round schedule, circle Dec 20-21 on your schedule as potential dates of a first round playoff game at Michigan Stadium.
The obvious being obvious: let's instead hope for a top 4 seed and first round bye. But the idea of Michigan hosting a playoff, especially if played in snowy weather vs a warm weather team (sniffle sniffle), seems very intriguing.
If they do the 1st round games 2 weekends after Championship Saturday (the 3rd weekend of December), the 2024 dates of Friday December 20 and Saturday December 21 will be the latest the games could be.
(in other years, the 1st round games would be on the Saturday that falls from December 15 to December 20)
We'll see how this works. I'm a bit dubious --- in other years it will be easier, but the 21st may be too close to Christmas IMO, that's a huge party and prep weekend and travel is already heavy.
Saw this earlier. What they don't say is how the revenue is shared and why I think the 12 team doesn't make sense until they specify it. You are better off financially being a 5-8 seed than a 1-4. UNLESS - ALL tickets sales AND concessions are shared conference wide. Even then you will still be getting 3+ hours of your school, stadium, name, fans on TV while the 1-4 schools sit home.
I'm pretty sure that since this would be a CFP game that all of the revenue, including ticket sales, would go to the CFP to be spread out among all of the FBS teams based on whatever revenue sharing agreement they have.
The host teams would only keep expenses, so financially there will be no difference between #4 and #5. Michigan would make exactly the same amount of money from the Alabama at Michigan game or the Utah at Tennessee game.
I really hope they move the season up to week 0 and hold championship week on Thanksgiving Friday and saturday, so the first round of the playoff can be considerably earlier in December.
I know it has been discussed, but I don't like this idea of playing games as early as Thursday, August 21 or Saturday, August 23. It would feel like losing 1 week of summer.
A first round playoff game on December 15-21 is just fine--better than moving a meaningless non-conference game to August 23-29.
I hear that, but I don't think playing nearly a third of the season (5/17) and its most meaningful parts in NFL stadiums is the best for the sport. I'd much prefer to move the quarterfinals to campus too, have the Rose and Sugar be perennial semi-finals, and wrap up the season by mid January. To do that and keep the semis on NYD, you'd need to move Championship weekend to Thanksgiving (or get rid of conference title games...which ain't happening). To do that, you either need to drop to 11 games (again, not happening) or move the season's start into August. Personally, I'd prefer to have a meaningless non-con game in August if it mean we'd get 1-2 more home games, and only 3 neutral site games, one of those being the Rose Bowl.
Ideally, we'd go to 11 games AND drop the conference title games and have the first round on thanksgiving and the quarterfinals in mid-December, and the season would never start on August 25th. But then we'd need to pay a lot of people for the 2 missing games.
OK, so the entire purpose of playing another game in August would be to move the quarterfinals onto home sites. Other options include: (1) drop the bye week, (2) drop the off-week between conference finals and the first round. The NFL doesn't bother with an off-week before the playoffs.
I also would have a hard time seeing the Peach, Orange, Cotton and Fiesta Bowls enjoying the option of moving the quarterfinals on campus, and as stupid as it is they do still have a lot of power in this CFP.
For sure we can and should drop those weeks, altho i'm sympathetic to wanting to give the players a rest.
I don't think the Cotton, Peach, Orange,or Fiesta will have that much pull when the contract comes up again for 2026 - the Rose and Sugar have pull because they're backed by the Big Ten and the SEC. The Fiesta used to be backed by the Big 12, but has gone back to being independent, and the Peach is the ultimate Johnny come lately, the Cotton used to be backed by the SWC but actually fell off before the CFP brought it back. The Orange has the ACC and Big 8 tradition, and a beautiful host city...not sure any of those matter.
April 27th, 2023 at 10:02 PM ^
From reading a couple other articles, it sounds like it's very probable that the Semifinals will be held mid-week. That will be to avoid the NFL on the weekends.
That's going to be ........ ugh.
I've liked the Semifinal format thus far. They haven't always been on NYD, but when not on NYD it's generally been on the Saturday before. It makes for good viewing, and fans can plan the necessary travel to attend.
Now, with this, we're going to get something like:
- 1st Round games on December 20-21, 2024.
- QF on January 1-2, 2025.
- SF on Wednesday January 8 and Thursday January 9, 2025.
- Final on Monday January 20.
So --- prepare for Michigan vs. Oklahoma in a SF game, played in Atlanta on Wednesday January 8, in the middle of the first full "back-to-work and back-to-school" week of a new calendar year, with neither school knowing they're going to be there until 6 days prior,
Not ideal for your every-day fan.
April 28th, 2023 at 10:25 AM ^
I think the main drivers for playing the semifinals mid-week are that it's tied to these two factors:
1) to be played on days that there's no NFL games.
2) to be played over the New Years Day holiday, to feed off the tradition of when the top college bowl games have long been played.
Depending upon which days of the week New Years Eve/Day fall on, semifinals might be played anywhere from Dec 31st to as late as Jan 3rd.
Alabama at the Big House for the winter solstice? Sign me up!
Seems like a good opportunity to play our first ever game against LSU. They had to break out the hot broth on the sidelines against Arkansas last year because it was...(wait for it)...41 degrees.
But don't count out Michigan weather. It could be 20 degrees the day before the game,60 degrees the day of the game, 14 inches of snow the next day.
I can see Saban now on ESPN saying Bama shouldn't have to play in that type of weather.
Could also see the committee just not putting Bama in that situation.
Would LOVE to see Saban have to play a Dec football game in a snowy, cold stadium. His fucking head would....
April 27th, 2023 at 10:20 PM ^
He would retire before he had to put on a puffer jacket and longjohns for three and a half hours outside in AA December under the lights
April 27th, 2023 at 10:51 PM ^
One reason it seems they have the option for home teams to choose a different venue is because by December it may be just to cold to play outdoors. I think Michigan, though, is one northern team that will still play in the Big House.
April 28th, 2023 at 10:58 AM ^
I think the Nits have said as much as well - that it'd be logistically tough but they'd work to figure it out.
I think MOST big ten teams would play at home - the one exception was(is?) Ohio State. But they mattered because they'd basically have been in every CFP since 2014 if it had been a 12 team playoff. Everyone else - Sparty, Wiscy, M and the Nits - would've been in 1-2 before 2020, and would've hosted once in that time. So OSU *was* the definitive voice for the Big Ten.
But not any more, snitches!
Yeah, agree that I'd rather have the bye.
Barring that, I'd love to have a southern school come up north in December. Hell, maybe we could play and beat Texas twice at home in the same season.
halftime in AA, for that 12/20 game,
is that called a zambrodie? sale on blades in the skate shop.