College Football Playoff Games Moved to Saturdays or Holidays
By Kyle Koster
The College Football Playoff management committee has opted to move the seminfinal games off non-holiday New Year’s Eves. In four of the next seven years, those games will be played the preceeding Saturday. In two of the other years, they’ll be played on New Year’s Day. During the 2021-22 season, seminfinals will be held on Dec. 31, a Friday.
“We tried to do something special with New Year’s Eve, even when it fell on a weekday,” CFB Playoff spokesperson Bill Hancock said in a statement. “But after studying this to see if it worked, we think we can do better. These adjustments will allow more people to experience the games they enjoy so much. For these four years, our previous call is reversed.”
Playing college football’s most important games on a day when many Americans work during the day and party at night was a foolhardy idea. The ratings reflected that. This was bad news for ESPN, which paid $7.3 billion over 12 years for broadcasting rights.
The committee had previously stated a commitment to keeping the games on New Year’s Eve. College football fans everywhere — especially those with jobs during normal hours — should be happy they finally came to their senses.