College Football Playoff's Schedule Change Is Refreshing Moment of Common Sense
College football doesn't always make sense.
It's a sport built on traditions and rules that were established decades and even a century ago. College football, especially its leadership, can be stubborn about changing its ways.
So when news broke Thursday that the College Football Playoff would move future semifinals off New Year's Eve, it was a surprising bit of good judgment from a game that could always use more of it.
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
"We tried to do something special with New Year's Eve, even when it fell on a weekday," College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said in a release. "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."
In news first reported by George Schroeder of USA Today, Hancock announced future semifinal games will be played either on Saturdays or holidays, starting with the 2018-19 season.
That means there will be no more New Year's Eve playoff games—with one notable exception—after the 2017-18 season's semifinals:
| 2016 | Saturday, December 31 | Fiesta and Peach |
| 2017 | Monday, January 1 | Rose and Sugar |
| 2018 | Saturday, December 29 | Cotton and Orange |
| 2019 | Saturday, December 28 | Fiesta and Peach |
| 2020 | Friday, January 1 | Rose and Sugar |
| 2021 | Friday, December 31* | Orange and TBD |
| 2022 | Saturday, December 31 | TBD |
| 2023 | Monday, January 1 | Rose and Sugar |
| 2024 | Saturday, December 28 | Orange and TBD |
| 2025 | Saturday, December 27 | TBD |
The New Year's Eve exception, as Schroeder noted on Twitter, will come in 2021. December 31 of that year is the designated federal holiday, as New Year's Day will be on a Saturday.
The move should've been a no-brainer for the playoff. Last season's semifinals on New Year's Eve were a complete flop in terms of TV audience.
According to Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated, the first semifinal game (Clemson vs. Oklahoma) lost 45 percent of its viewership from 2015 (Florida State vs. Oregon). The second semifinal (Alabama vs. Michigan State) lost 34.4 percent from 2015 (Alabama vs. Ohio State).
In total, the playoff lost more than 12 million viewers from 2014 to 2015. Those losses couldn't be blamed solely on the lack of drama in Clemson and Alabama's commanding victories.
The Clemson vs. Oklahoma semifinal was the closer game, yet it still had the worse ratings. Why? For starters, it kicked off at 4 p.m. ET on a non-holiday, when most of the country was still working.
Playing the semifinals on New Year's Eve, a day fans don't normally get off from work and a night dominated by non-football parties, never made sense. ESPN even lobbied to get the games moved to another night. The network saw the lower ratings coming.
But the CFP wanted to avoid any problems with major bowl games that didn't want to budge from New Year's Day—looking at you, Rose Bowl—and accommodate the playoff schedule.
So the CFP decided it would play semifinals some years on New Year's Eve, making the grand claim that it was going to "change the paradigm" and create a new tradition on December 31.
That didn't happen. But the flop still didn't look like it was going to change anything.
In the wake of TV rating news for the 2015 semifinals, Hancock told Fox Sports the playoff was "absolutely locked" into New Year's Eve. In March, he told Schroeder the committee had not discussed moving off of the dates.
A few months later, though, common sense has won out for college football and its fans.
"I heard, 'I have to work,' or 'I wanted to go to a New Year's Eve party,' or 'I was at a party but they wouldn't let me turn the sound on," Hancock told Schroeder on Thursday. "People love college football and they're very opinionated about it. They're happy to share their opinions. I enjoy hearing their opinions."
Hancock was honest in his comments Thursday about the playoff's failure on New Year's Eve. They were refreshing quotes from a college football leader who repeatedly said for over a year now that he and the committee were dead set on sticking with the idea.
The move off of New Year's Eve is an example of putting fans above a clever marketing ploy.
The playoff itself isn't going to make any more money off of these changes. It signed its $5.6 billion contract with ESPN back in 2012. The playoff had already made things clear it wasn't going to cater to ESPN by not changing for the 2015-16 season.
That pressure from ESPN might have increased over the last few months. As Timothy Burke of Deadspin wrote, "with that kind of money comes a very heavy negotiating hand."
But no matter if the move came because of ESPN, the fans or a little of both: The playoff's willingness to change is surprising in a good way.
The College Football Playoff leadership did the sensible thing. It did it earlier than expected. It also admitted it messed up.
College football doesn't normally give you all of that at one time.
Justin Ferguson is a National College Football Analyst at Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @JFergusonBR.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
