If you go to the Allstate Sugar Bowl every year, you’ll have to find something else to do to celebrate the start of 2027.
For the first time since 2011, the Sugar Bowl will not be played on either New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, or January 2nd.
It will actually be played on Friday, January 15th. That’s because the Sugar Bowl next season will be a College Football Playoff semifinal game. The CFP quarterfinals are played around the New Year’s Holiday.
The Cotton Bowl, the Peach Bowl, the Rose Bowl, and the Fiesta Bowl will make up the four quarterfinal games
There will not be a CFP game on New Year’s Eve, because the NFL will have a Thursday night game on December 31st.
So why a two-week break between the quarterfinals and the semifinals? The first two years of the 12-team College Football Playoff had the semis one week after the quarters.
The answer is simple. The calendar just doesn’t fall right. January 1st is a Friday; if you held the semifinals on the following Thursday, one of the teams would not have a full week in between games.
Of course, the CFP does not want to go up against the NFL on January 9th and 10th, so they will just wait to hold the semifinals on January 14th and 15th.
The national championship game next season will be on Monday, January 26th.
LSU football coach Lane Kiffin expressed his opinion on “X.” He’s not a fan of the drawn-out college football playoffs.
“Somehow the calendar got even on worse on purpose….Kids play until January 25th and have almost a month between games?!?!”
The college football playoffs will begin December 18th and 19th with first-round games on campus. So, you are looking at a five-week postseason.
No one is happy with the current college football calendar, but can enough of the leaders of the sport agree on what it should be?
The SEC and Big 10 can’t agree on the number of teams that should be in the College Football Playoffs. The Big 10 says 24, the SEC would prefer 16, which is why they are staying at 12 for at least one more season.
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Many in the sport say the season should end around New Year’s Day. For that to happen, the season will need to start the week before Labor Day weekend, so late August.
And the playoffs would start the week after the conference championship games. But that’s the same weekend as the Army-Navy game, and President Trump has threatened to sign an executive order, giving the Army-Navy game an exclusive four-hour broadcast window.
What happens if the college football playoffs get expanded to 16 or 24 teams and the goal is to end the season around New Year’s Day? Then the conference championship games may go away.
But the SEC title game is a big money maker for the conference.
There’s no easy fix for the college football calendar dilemma, and working around the NFL’s schedule complicates it more.
So if you like college football, you get to enjoy it into late January next season.
New Orleans hosts the CFP championship game in 2028 for the 2027 season. Right now, the game is scheduled for January 24th. But if there’s CFP expansion, could we see the title game be played the weekend before the Super Bowl?
Let’s hope not. I love college football as much as anyone, but I agree with Kiffin: shorten the schedule.