More College Football Is Fine, but Stretching Playoff to January 25 Is Completely Ridiculous

Look, most of us are not anti-playoff expansion.

More college football? Sure. More meaningful games in December? Absolutely. A move to 14 teams or even 16 at some point? Fine. That probably is coming whether the traditionalists like it or not.

But 24 teams is too much, and this latest scheduling setup is a perfect reminder that the people running this thing are already struggling to make a 12-team playoff feel normal. So maybe let’s not add more chaos until somebody figures out a calendar that does not feel like it was assembled by a committee trapped in an airport lounge.

The latest playoff calendar for the 2026 season is exactly why fans are groaning. Ben Feller put it simply on X: “CFB playoffs starting on December 18th and ending on January 25th is absurd.” He is right. The 2026-27 College Football Playoff will begin with first-round games on December 18 and 19, then run all the way to the national championship on January 25 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. That is a 39-day postseason for an 11-game playoff. That is not a sprint to a title. That is a semester abroad.

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And the layout makes it even dumber.

CFB playoffs starting on December 18th and ending on January 25th is absurd. https://t.co/MbXfgyFoGV

— Ben Feller (@BenFeller) June 1, 2026

The first round will be played on campus sites on December 18 and 19. The quarterfinals follow at the Fiesta Bowl on December 30, then the Peach, Cotton, and Rose Bowls on January 1. Then, because apparently momentum is now optional, the semifinals do not arrive until January 14 and 15 at the Orange and Sugar Bowls.

Then the title game does not happen until January 25. So after fans get a nice December start and a New Year’s burst of action, they are supposed to sit around for nearly two weeks waiting for the semis, then wait again for the championship. That is not building drama. That is draining it out of the room with a shop vac.

This is the part college football keeps missing. Fans want more access, not more dead space. Nobody is asking for the playoff to be stretched across the holiday calendar like a prestige-TV mini-series. The sport already has one of the weirdest calendars in America, with rivalry week, conference title games, bowl season, transfer portal madness, opt-outs, coaching moves, and signing-day chatter all stepping on each other’s toes. Now the playoff itself is being dragged from before Christmas all the way to late January. That is absurd, and it feels absurd because it is.

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And before somebody says, “Well, the NFL spreads things out too,” spare me. The NFL has a longer season, a much more standardized calendar, and does not spend half the postseason arguing over whether players even want to be there. College football is different. It lives on urgency, regional obsession, and the emotional rush of Saturdays mattering a little too much. When you stretch the playoff this far, you are messing with the rhythm that makes the sport great in the first place.

That does not mean expansion is bad. It means bad expansion planning is bad.

A 14-team playoff could work. A 16-team playoff could work. There is real support in the sport for those ideas. The current format is staying at 12 teams for 2026, while expansion debates keep simmering. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been standing firm for a 16-team model while pushing back against a 24-team version supported elsewhere, and no final decision has been made yet for the future beyond that. That is where the sport should probably land anyway. Fourteen or 16 gives you more access, more fan bases involved, and more meaningful late-season races without turning the whole thing into a bloated March Madness knockoff in shoulder pads.

But 24 teams? No thanks.

At that point, you are not preserving the value of the regular season. You are flattening it. College football’s biggest advantage has always been that September and October games can still haunt you in November. That is what makes the sport so great and so cruel. Go to 24 and you are basically telling too many teams, “Relax, you can lose a bunch and still get hot later.” That is not what makes college football special. It makes it feel watered down. And if the people in charge are already spreading 12 teams from December 18 to January 25, imagine the scheduling circus they would create with 24. We would probably crown the champion around Valentine’s Day and call it innovation.

So yes, give fans a little more playoff football. Most of us can live with that. But do it intelligently. Tighten the windows. Stop treating empty calendar space like a feature. And for the love of all things holy, stop pretending a playoff that begins before Christmas and ends on January 25 is some elegant masterpiece.

It is not. It is absurd. And college football is too good to be scheduled this stupidly.

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