Florida State and Georgia Tech kick off the 2024 college football season on Saturday at 12:00 p.m. ET at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland.
The international ACC showdown is one of four college football games played a week before the traditional Labor Day weekend kickoff, a date known as “Week 0.” The full smorgasbord of college games unfolds next week, with three top-25 matchups (Georgia-Clemson, Notre Dame-Texas A&M and LSU-USC) and two tough matchups between intrastate/border rivals (Miami-Florida and Penn State-West Virginia).
But what if those games were this weekend? What if the season started a week earlier?
In the future, it could happen. Not long ago, College Football Playoff leaders seriously discussed the prospect of moving the entire regular season up a week: Week 0 would become the new Week 1, and the conference championship games would be moved from the first weekend in December to Thanksgiving week. Rivalry Week, traditionally played on Thanksgiving week, would be moved to the third week in November.
The goal: Free up the second week of December to play the four first-round games of the expanded playoff. Those games are tentatively scheduled for the third week of December, when at least two of them will be played head-to-head against the NFL.
Is it realistic to move the entire regular season? Yes.
Is it hard to move the entire regular season? Yes.
“We have to continue to consider Week 0, in my opinion,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said of the prospect last year. “I don’t know if anyone is willing to say we can’t do it or we can do it.”
But since Phillips said those words months ago, conversations about the prospect have faded. College leaders reluctantly made the decision to take on the NFL. Two of the four first-round playoff games on Dec. 21 will be played at the same time as two NFL regular-season games.
These aren’t your average boring NFL games. Kicking off at 1 p.m. ET on NBC is the Texans versus the two-time reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs and quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Kicking off at 4:30 p.m. on FOX is one of the most compelling division rivalries of the past 20 years: the Steelers vs. Ravens.
“They deliberately planned to be aggressive against us,” said an executive of an American football team.
The college version of the First Four debuts this year with a game on Friday night, Dec. 20, and three games on Saturday, Dec. 21: kickoffs at noon, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. The two games against the NFL will be televised by TNT Sports via a sublicense package from rights holder ESPN, which is almost certainly expecting a drop in ratings for such games.
The viewing figures for those two matches may bring the college administrators back to their old topic of conversation: Should the entire regular season be moved up a week, so that Week 0 becomes the new Week 1?
“If (the assessments) get stuck, the whole conversation starts again,” said a college leader who is aware of the discussions within the CFP.
Of course, it’s never that simple — moving an entire season back a week. There are long-term contracts that need to be adjusted, like conference championship venues. Normally played the first weekend in December, title games begin on Thanksgiving weekend to allow for at least a negotiated 12-day gap between the final league title game and the first playoff game.
“I’m all for Week 0 without moving the end date of the season,” MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said during an interview last December. “Moving championships up a week is problematic for a lot of us when you’re hosting your championships in NFL stadiums. You’re pretty much locked in.”
There are many more hurdles, such as convincing your primary network partner to go along with this. Over the past two years, ESPN executives have expressed concern to some CFP leaders about the impact of such a move on holiday television windows.
More than 50 FBS games are played during Thanksgiving week, many of which are dramatic rivalry matchups like Auburn-Alabama, Michigan-Ohio State and Florida State-Florida. These are ratings juggernauts on a holiday week, generating eye-popping numbers. If the schedule were moved forward, Thanksgiving week would only feature nine games, and while they would all be conference championships, five of them would involve only Group of Five programs.
And then we haven’t even talked about the shift in the traditional opening weekend, which also falls around a holiday (Labor Day).
“You would be wiping out two of the best college football weekends,” one college official said.
But it would also set the sport up for a great December, argued another. By moving up the title games, college football could play its first-round games without NFL interference on the second weekend of December.
For now, in a 12-team playoff, there are four of those first-round games, but what happens when the inevitable happens and a 16-team field arrives? There would be eight first-round games. Many college leaders believe the sport should dominate the second weekend in December, like New Year’s Day. In fact, if the season were to shift, could the CFP semifinals be held on New Year’s Day again? That’s the long-term thinking of many in the industry.
All of this sheds light on the growing animosity between the NFL and its little brother. College football continues to grow in interest and viewership, surpassing professional sports like the NBA, MLB and NHL.
But it still pales in comparison to the beast that is out there the competition. TV figures confirm this.
Last year, NFL games accounted for 93 of the 100 most-watched TV shows. The only other sport to make the top 100? College football. The sport had three events that landed in the top 100: Michigan-Ohio State (58th), the SEC championship game (71st) and the CFP national championship game (74th).
The NFL, aware of its growth and power, has expanded its games to traditional college football dates. The league has begun playing on Black Friday. It has followed college football’s lead by also playing a weekly game on Thursday nights. Expanding its own playoff schedule means that college football — under the current playoff schedule — will hold midweek semifinals, this year on Jan. 9-10 (Thursday-Friday) to avoid the NFL’s wild-card weekend.
There’s another curveball coming: The NFL will likely approve an 18th regular-season game. Will Labor Day weekend remain a sacred safe space for college football? Or will the NFL move the season back to align with the start of college football?
There’s one way to guarantee that kickoff is for college football only: make Week 0 Week 1.
“It has to happen,” said a key decision maker. “That’s where the world is going.”
