This Saturday will be unprecedented—and in a way not everyone will be happy with.
For the first time in what feels like forever the NFL and major college football are in intentional and direct conflict with one another. The first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff kicks off at noon ET, with SMU visiting Penn State. At 1 p.m., the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans kick off at Arrowhead. At 4 p.m., Clemson at Texas will get going. A half-hour after that, you’ll get Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens, with Ohio State–Tennessee next as a stand-alone nightcap.
First thought: That’s a lot of football, which is great.
Second thought: They could’ve done a lot better job than they did planning it.
Because of the length of some college games, the end of the two early ones could most certainly collide. The chances of that are even greater in the late-afternoon window. Which is to say everyone scheduled this stuff without regard to the other party involved—and that is incredibly short-sighted by all who are behind this.
This, to be clear, isn’t the NFL’s hostile capture of the flag the NBA planted decades ago on Christmas Day. Pro football and pro basketball are competitors for the sports consumer dollar. All’s fair in business. They have competing interests. They are competing. All good.
Full College Football Playoff Bracket Expert Predictions
Conversely, the NFL’s relationship to college football, a sport that’s risen to the point where it’s become America’s second most popular sport behind only its big football brother, is to be valued, not abused. The same goes the other way—the NFL’s success is good for college football. The pro league gets a free minor league, year-round promotion of its second-biggest event (the draft), and ready-made stars coming in who’ve been on national TV for years. The college ranks draft off the freight train of success the NFL has experienced.
They should be helping each other, at just about every turn.
In this case, there actually was an effort to do just that.
Before plans for the College Football Playoff were formalized last year, NFL officials had a series of clandestine meetings with CFP officials and conference commissioners. My understanding is the NFL took the lead in these meetings—but only to suggest ways that college football could work around its desires.
The NFL’s stance on this is simple. Part of the league’s antitrust exemption restricts it from playing games on Saturdays from the second Saturday in September through the second Saturday in December. As such, the NFL has routinely slated games for the third Saturday of December. Going back to 2000, and not counting this year, the NFL held games on this weekend in 20 of 24 seasons, including the past 10 years in a row.
Not looking to cede that real estate, the NFL suggested that college football play weeknight doubleheaders on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of this week. The college football folks responded that they weren’t going to jump into what many believed would be a black hole for television ratings. So the two sides left the table, with no real agreement, resolving to go about their business like the other didn’t exist—with one exception.
The NFL did vacate the prime-time Saturday window it had filled the past 10 years and in 20 of the past 22 years. The college football folks I talked to appreciated that. However, after murmurs that the NFL would stagger its kickoff times, setting them at, say, 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. ET, the league slotted itself right near the windows in which the earlier CFP games would be held, creating head-to-head competition.
Meanwhile, ESPN won the bidding for the CFP rights, something it didn’t fully anticipate happening. The Worldwide Leader believed, at the time, that the rights would likely be split up, so getting the whole slate of games wasn’t something their execs had budgeted for. With the rights, came the option to sublicense out games. And so when Turner, which was in the process of losing its NBA rights, showed desire to get into the CFP fray, it found a willing seller in ESPN, and a deal was struck to split the four first-round games.
ESPN gave TNT the two games that’ll be head-to-head with the NFL, then grabbed the two biggest national brands of the first round teams—Ohio State and Notre Dame—for the Friday and Saturday prime-time slots. Which is a good indication of how ESPN thinks the NFL will affect the CFP’s ratings.
It’s also an indication that this isn’t the right thing for the football fan who wants to take in all the action, but will be forced to channel surf on Saturday.
