Conflicting NFL, College Schedules Contributing to CFP Expansion Delay

Scheduling around the pro football postseason appears to be a major factor in the delay of expanding the College Football Playoff.

The College Football Playoff management committee met in Dallas for seven hours on Thursday in the latest round of meetings surrounding potential expansion to 12 teams.

Exiting the meetings on Thursday, there was no official update regarding timeline of expansion of the playoff.

“They made progress. They’re not finished,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock told Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger.

When news regarding expansion broke this summer, a timeline for implementation of an expanded field was set for 2026 at the latest. Despite this timeline, the hope was that expansion could take place as early as ’24 if the details were ironed out.

A significant issue impacting current expansion talks involves the CFP having to go head to head with the NFL playoffs.

The Atlanta and Miami national title games are currently scheduled for Jan. 6, 2025, and Jan. 5, 2026, respectively. The management committee, which consists of 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, would like there to be 12 days between the conference championship games and the first round of the CFP. 

• RELATED: CFP Leaders Frustrated As NFL Encroaches on Scheduling Battleground

The management committee also would like to keep the national title game on a Monday night.

Here’s the problem: there’s not enough room in the calendar to accomplish those goals and have weekly games. While an easy solution might be to simply move the title games back one week, this would conflict with the NFL’s Monday night wild-card game, which the managers would be reluctant to do. 

“You’re just trying to minimize all the ways the NFL will f—k you,” one top CFP official told Dellenger.

One potential solution that could make sense is to move the national championship game back two weeks, but that would push the college football season even further into January. It’s not a perfect solution, but it would be a way to work around the ever-evolving NFL schedule. 

The NFL already has announced scheduling changes that will include games being played on Black Friday beginning in ’23. Traditionally, college football has ruled the day on Black Friday, which historically has included rivalry games such as the Egg Bowl between Ole Miss and Mississippi State among others. While the NFL’s plans to expand its schedule to Black Friday has no impact on playoff expansion, it’s yet another reminder of the league’s influence over college football.

“The NFL is squashing us,” one commissioner told Dellenger. “And now Black Friday? Where does it end?”

Regardless of the twists and turns that remain in the details regarding the expansion of the playoff to 12 teams, it’s clear that the CFP management committee is prioritizing keeping the national championship on a Monday night unimpeded by the NFL.

“We like playing [the title game] on Monday nights,” Hancock told Sports Illustrated‘s Richard Johnson earlier this month. “There is no NFL on our Monday nights, so we like that.”

The College Football Playoff management committee plans to meet once again this year to try to finalize expansion of the field before ’26.