Army-Navy Game Schedule Change Eyed by HC to Help College Football Playoff Format

Army head coach Jeff Monken is among those advocating for the annual Army-Navy game to be moved to Thanksgiving weekend, which would help shorten the college football season by one week.

"There's not an appetite for the college football season to go all the way to the end of January," he told The Athletic's Seth Emerson. "There's a real hope that we can get this thing into one semester, and have the championship game around Jan. 1, which I think would be awesome."

Since 2009, the Army-Navy matchup has been played on the second weekend in December, and before that was played one weekend after Thanksgiving. But with the expanded College Football Playoff pushing the season through January at this point—next season's national championship game will be on Jan. 25—an appetite to condense the schedule is growing.

Moving Army-Navy up in the schedule, while still featuring it prominently, is one way Monken believes the sport can achieved that goal.

"I think Army-Navy is a huge part of the history of college football, and what it is today, even. Give us a four-hour block on Thanksgiving, or on Friday of Thanksgiving, or on Saturday of Thanksgiving, and give us a four-hour block, and just say nobody else plays during this four-hour block," he told Emerson. "That's still protecting the game."