Anthony Wilson
When the NFL released its 2024 schedule on Wednesday, it shot straight to the heart of college football. Dec. 21 marked the first round of the new 12-team College Football Playoff, with three key contests scheduled on a day the NFL historically holds games. In response to the invasion, the NFL counter-scheduled two massive showdowns in front of the CFP roster.
The Texans face the Chiefs at 1 p.m. ET in a battle between Patrick Mahomes and CJ Stroud, two of the best young quarterbacks in the game. At 4:30 am, Baltimore and Pittsburgh play in the renewal of one of the NFL’s great rivalries. Unlike the CFP games, both matchups are guaranteed to be broadcast on broadcast television rather than basic cable.
When the NFL wants to cut you, there’s not much that can be done. Last year, the league decided it wanted to take control of Christmas and kick out the NBA. The ratings for these games surpassed traditional basketball day. The NFL has a Marvel-level monopoly on sports culture, for better or worse. For fans of anything else, it’s much worse.
Regardless, college football won’t change — and it shouldn’t.
Scheduling was one of the biggest complications for the College Football Playoff expansion, as the organization tried to sandwich the regular season, recruiting, NFL and classroom dates into one clean product. Despite supposedly consultancy with the NFL, the CFP has finally decided that fighting on Saturday is preferable to trying to organize multiple games during a normal work week in December.
“We’ve looked at all of these options before,” CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock said in April. “Could we play on Thursday night? Could we play more than one game on Friday? There are no big options. Where we settled is the option that ESPN is happy with.”
The College Football Playoff schedule that has been released for the next two seasons features a first-round game on Friday night, along with a tripleheader in each traditional window: 12 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 7 p.m. Finals may coincide with college football finals. So now, college football will prepare for perhaps the biggest wrinkle in the history of the sport as it takes on the Empire. And overall, it’s the right decision.
It is almost impossible to contextualize the power that the NFL exerts on sports and broadcast television. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched television programs of the year were NFL broadcasts. The simulcast of Super Bowl LVIII on CBS was the most-watched program in television history. The 56 most-watched television shows in 2023 were NFL games.
For context, Ohio State-Michigan ranked 57th. The CFP title game had a strong showing, with 25 million viewers, but only won one NFL playoff game. The NFL has continually expanded its presence as much as it legally can to try to achieve an Amazon-like sports monopoly. If the NFL wants to bring college football to its knees, there’s not much college football can do. But ultimately, that’s even more reason to ignore the NFL and try to build something separate.
In 2023, the NFL played its first Black Friday game between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets, a day traditionally reserved for college football. Due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, NFL teams are essentially not allowed to play after 6pm on Fridays to try to protect college and high school football. Naturally, the league scheduled a game to finish by then, but it gobbled up every second it could. In a just world, Congress would reevaluate the NFL’s overwhelming power and issue a new SBA that takes more account of its new power, but we are past the point of Congress acting on antitrust issues.
ABC essentially changed the Black Friday noon time slot, swapping NC State-UNC for UTSA-Tulane. However, Arkansas-Missouri remained in a similar timeslot on CBS and actually got better ratings versus the NFL – jumping from 3.3 to 4.1 million viewers – largely driven by a much stronger Missouri team. better in 2023. On the other hand, Jets-Dolphins was the second lowest-rated Amazon broadcast of the season, with just 9.6 million viewersa relative pittance compared to Amazon’s average viewership of nearly 12 million games.
It’s true that Saturday’s CFP will be the best of the best, with several of the NFL’s biggest brands facing off against postseason competition. When the Ravens and Steelers played in Week 9 of the 2023 season, they drew 18.6 million viewers. Still, college football must hold its ground. Millions of people watch college football for college football. The priority should simply be to create the best possible product for fans and hope that the quality appeals to the rest of the sporting world. Based on initial projections, the sport should be doing well.
A projected first round based on Dennis Dodd’s post-spring rankings would feature Alabama vs. Notre Dame in Tuscaloosa and Texas vs. Penn State in Austin. These confrontations would get the energy flowing. Ole Miss would also host Missouri, with newcomer Boise State hoping to defeat Oregon in Eugene. These are great games that can survive on their own merit.
ESPN can also be smart about scheduling games. There is no reason to pit Alabama-Notre Dame against Patrick Mahomes. An intra-conference battle between Ole Miss and Missouri is easier to sacrifice. Only two of the four games will be impacted.
Of course, there’s another aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked in the battle between the NFL and college football: Multiview. YouTube TV launched the product last season, which allows viewers to easily watch multiple games at the same time. And in a multiplatform world, viewers can easily watch college and professional games on different devices.
Certainly, the PCP would prefer that viewers across the country stuck to their game, but a conflict is not on the same level as a death sentence. And as the CBS vs. Amazon Prime showdown proved last year, many viewers will gravitate toward the better product.
That’s what matters most: Creating the best product possible. And with the first college football playoff games on campus and several exciting matchups, the CFP should still feel pretty optimistic about what Dec. 21 will hold for the sport.
