CFB Playoff Games to go Head-to-Head with NFL Games in December
It’s official: The college football postseason is set to go head-to-head with the National Football League in the coming days. The third week of December will feature one game on Friday and three on Saturday in the first round of the College Football Playoff, Commissioner Bill Hancock confirmed on Thursday, as reported by CBS Sports.
That’s, of course, during the part of the NFL season where games are on both Saturday and Sunday. The CFP Semifinals would then be in the midweek so as to avoid the NFL’s Wild Card Weekend.
Additionally, the CFP Title Game for the first season of the new format is set for Jan. 20, 2025. One can find other details right here, as presented by SI Now’s Dellenger.
Meanwhile, if the expanded playoff were in place this past season, we know exactly how it would have looked. The College Football Playoff office distributed a bracket with 12 teams Thursday, which you can take a look at below courtesy of SI Now’s Ross Dellenger, and it offered a glimpse at the actual setup we can expect, with four conference champions receiving byes and eight other teams.
The four highest conference champions earned byes, with No. 1 Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, No. 2 Michigan in the Rose Bowl, No. 3 Clemson in the Peach Bowl and No. 4 Utah in the Fiesta Bowl. TCU, because it didn’t win the Big 12 Championship, slides in at No. 5 in an at-large game against No. 12 seed Tulane.
Kansas State, who defeated TCU in the Big 12 Title Game, is No. 9 vs. No. 8 seed Tennessee. It would have traveled to Knoxville for the meeting.
On the other side of the bracket, there are a couple other matchups. Sixth-seeded Ohio State would have hosted division rival and No. 11 seed Penn State, while No. 7 seed Alabama would have welcomed Lincoln Riley and the 10th-seeded USC Trojans to Tuscaloosa.
We all wait with anticipation as this format comes to fruition in the coming days. But for now, we have one more season with things as they are.
