There is no shortage of complaints when it comes to college football. Between the transfer portal, NIL and the College Football Playoff, the sport has seen its fair share of changes over the last few years. In fact, it’s almost unrecognizable from what it was even just a few years ago.
Maybe I am too hard on it because it was the first sport I ever fell in love with and when you love something, you want the best of it. While everyone may not agree on every problem, or how to fix it, if there’s one thing that we all can agree on, it’s that the calendar is awful.
College Football Calendar Chaos
The transfer portal is one thing, but part of the problem is that the season is dragged out way too long. Kickoff starts on August 29th, 2026, and the last game of the season isn’t until January 25th, 2027.
That’s five full months between the first kickoff and the last, which is just crazy. I understand it’s tough to manage between the school schedules, avoiding the NFL and more, but there must be a way to get more games played in the month of December.
It is possible that conference championship games could disappear, but until then, the first weekend of December is the only option. However do we need to wait from December 5th all the way until December 30th to play the Quarterfinals? Absolutely not.
If it were up to me, this whole thing would be wrapped up by New Year’s Day. Skip the wait and just keep on playing. Maybe move the season up a week earlier and give a week between the conference title games to the start of the playoffs, if needed.
College Football Could Lose Fans
Let’s be real here, the longer the season drags on with no games, the less interest the general college football fan has. As a diehard fan, I will go out of my way to watch the games, but not everyone is like me.
As much as it pains me to say, the NFL is the king of football. They get the eyeballs, attention and steal all the headlines. College football needs to accept that and doesn’t need to try and compete with them.
The sport is never going to compete on the same level as the NFL and to play playoff games while the NFL is playing playoff games is just foolish. Over the last couple of years, it seems like the national championship game is losing steam. Granted, the ratings were strong this year, but the underdog story of Indiana helped tremendously.
NFL is King
Even after the semifinal games last year, guess what all everyone wants to talk about? The NFL playoffs. So why even put yourself in that position in the first place? It’s bad enough we can’t play these games on weekends because you can’t go head-to-head with the NFL playoffs. That’s why these games seem like they are all just scheduled on random days.
If you want to keep these old NY6 bowl games, fine, keep them, but just don’t play them on or the day before New Year’s. I understand this sport is run by money, but at some point, they have to start thinking about the people who spend money to watch the product.
For me, it just seems like the sport loses more momentum as the season goes on when it should be the exact opposite. You want everything to build up to this big championship game but when you play games on random days and wait so long between them, it just kills it.
People like me have begged for the season to shorten. There are two full rounds of the NFL playoffs before the National Champion game is even determined. The fact that the regular season ends in November and the champion isn’t crowned until the end of January is ignorant. This is sadly just another example of college football not getting its act together as we continue on a path down a road that is broken.
