This will be a long post but I hope it will be worth your investment in time and effort reading it. A lot of things have materialized this week that will make 2024 a departure point for the future of college football. I think there's enough news here to make it worth you while.
There are national and SEC implications. I'll focus on the SEC ones first.
Texas and Oklahoma joining the league in 2024 is the catalyst for the majority of these changes for 2024. The first thing it will change is the elimination of the East and West divisions. But the most impactful change will be a change in scheduling. The league will go to a 9-game SEC schedule and what's known as the 3-6-6 format. Each SEC team will have 3 annual opponents and 6 other SEC games per year. The remaining 6 teams come in the second year and alternate each year, meaning that if a player plays for a team for 4 years, he will have visited every other SEC stadium by the end of his career.
The first big question is which 3 traditional opponents each team gets. For Ole Miss, having LSU and State are givens, and the only question is the third team. I'm hearing Vanderbilt is the most logical 3rd team but I've also heard Arkansas. Personally, I hope it's Vandy because its easy to get to and a trip to Nashville is almost always better than the icy November nights we seem to get in Fayetteville every other year. Just FWIW, for State, Ole Miss and Alabama seem to be givens, with their 3rd team usually being reported as A&M.
Maybe the bigger SEC question is the current rule of playing at least one P5 team from another conference each year, given the 9th SEC game. This is hugely controversial because almost half the league has a traditional in-state rival that serves as their current P5 opponent (GA/Tech, Florida/FSU, S.Carolina/Clemson, Kentucky/Louisville, etc.). The teams who don't want the P5 opponent rule includes teams like State and Missouri who want to soften the schedule after 9 SEC games to give themselves a better shot at a winning season. The word I hear is that the P5 rule will be enforced because of TV demands. Ole Miss has some pretty attractive P5 opponents lined up, including USC. I've heard that Carter is on the side of dropping the additional P5 team, but I hope i stays so we don't have to endure more Tulsa-type games.
With no divisions, the SEC Championship game will stay in place but match the top 2 SEC teams. There's a big chance of a rematch, much like what happened in the Big 12 this year when TCU beat Kansas State. Several conferences didn't really want a championship game with the new playoff system (PAC12, ACC, etc.) but it's a big money maker for the SEC and Big10 so the decision was made to continue playing conference championship games.
All of those questions about SEC scheduling will be addressed at the SEC meetings in Destin this spring.
Big National Changes for 2024
Besides the conference expansion shake-ups, 2024 will be the first year of a 12-team playoff. As you will remember, there are 6 guaranteed slots - one for each P5 conference champion and one for the top G5 team. The other 6 slots will come from at large teams. For the first time, teams seeded 5-12 will play playoff games on campus. This is something the Big10 has wanted for years - especially if a warm weather SEC team like LSU has to go play at Michigan State in December.
The thing that most people haven't realized is the way bowls and post-season scheduling will be affected starting in 2024. The current access bowls (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Fiesta and Peach) will host the quarterfinals and semifinals. The national championship game will be still be done via bid, just as it is today. Remember that the Georgia/TCU game was held in Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles and next year's game will be in Houston. As of yet, the decision on which access bowls host the quarters and which have the semis hasn't been decided, but it will rotate among them each year.
I don't know why it hasn't been publicized yet, but I found out the schedule for the first 12-game playoff. These are actual dates, but the particular sites aren't finalized yet other than the National Championship Game being in Atlanta. Here it is:
Conference championship games will be played during the weekend of December 7, 2024. That's a week after the regular season ends, just like it is today.
First-round on-campus games will be played the weekend of December 21 with seed 5 hosting 12, seed 6 hosting 11, seed 7 hosting 10 and seed 8 hosting seed 9. Currently the networks are thinking that one game will happen on Friday night December 20 and the other three at noon, 4pm and 8pm on Saturday.
The second round will happen on Saturday, December 28. These will include the winners of round 1 against seeds 1-4 at the site of four of the access bowls (e.g. Peach, Cotton, Fiesta and Orange). There is also the probability that one of those games will move to Friday night and then the other 3 will play on Saturday at noon, 4 and 8.
The semifinals will happen on Monday, January 6 at the site of the 2 remaining access bowls (Rose, Cotton). Yes - the networks are looking to present a playoff doubleheader on a Monday night. This is to avoid direct competition with the NFL playoffs that weekend.
The final is set for Monday, January 20, 2025 in Atlanta. That night happens to be Martin Luther King Day and it's also in his hometown of Atlanta, so there are many, many implications. The feeling is that the Martin Luther King holiday weekend would make travel much easier and encourage a higher TV audience. It seems that MLK Day is the target for future college national championship games.
If you pay attention to that schedule you will notice a bombshell. College football is abandoning New Years. The 12-game playoff officially de-emphasizes the bowls because they are moving all of the majors off the New Years holiday unless New Years falls on a Saturday. Again, nobody has mentioned this yet but it is gigantic news.
Starting on New Years Day 2025 there will still be bowls, but instead of the Rose, Orange, Cotton you will see the Citrus, Gator, Las Vegas, etc. The smaller bowls are still a huge TV draw and are money makers for the networks so they will stay. But no traditional major bowls on New Years for the first time in over 100 years is staggering news.
Finally, a couple of inside things that are happening because of the 2024 shake-up:
Last year the Rose Bowl made what they portrayed as a generous and magnanimous decision to abandon their traditional New Years afternoon slot for the good of football. What really happened is that this schedule was leaked to them and they discovered that unless they agreed to change they would be left out of the playoffs. Instead of USC vs Ohio State, the Rose Bowl would have to settle for 8-3 Arizona State vs 9-2 Minnesota on New Years afternoon. It was no accident that the National Championship game this January was played across town in Sofi Stadium and not in Pasadena. The signal was sent by college football and received by the Rose Bowl people.
The latest inside thing is that the network rivalries and wars between Disney (ESPN) and Fox are heating up and will only get hotter. Part of the agreement to let Texas and Oklahoma leave a year early to join the SEC was that Fox demanded that the 2024 game between Oklahoma and Michigan be moved from Norman to Ann Arbor so Fox could televise it as a Big10 home game. To soften the blow, the return game when Michigan travels to Norman will happen in 2027, but Fox insisted that they get the first game of that series. Going back to the SEC's additional P5 game discussion, the network question might become a huge factor in scheduling in the future.
There are national and SEC implications. I'll focus on the SEC ones first.
Texas and Oklahoma joining the league in 2024 is the catalyst for the majority of these changes for 2024. The first thing it will change is the elimination of the East and West divisions. But the most impactful change will be a change in scheduling. The league will go to a 9-game SEC schedule and what's known as the 3-6-6 format. Each SEC team will have 3 annual opponents and 6 other SEC games per year. The remaining 6 teams come in the second year and alternate each year, meaning that if a player plays for a team for 4 years, he will have visited every other SEC stadium by the end of his career.
The first big question is which 3 traditional opponents each team gets. For Ole Miss, having LSU and State are givens, and the only question is the third team. I'm hearing Vanderbilt is the most logical 3rd team but I've also heard Arkansas. Personally, I hope it's Vandy because its easy to get to and a trip to Nashville is almost always better than the icy November nights we seem to get in Fayetteville every other year. Just FWIW, for State, Ole Miss and Alabama seem to be givens, with their 3rd team usually being reported as A&M.
Maybe the bigger SEC question is the current rule of playing at least one P5 team from another conference each year, given the 9th SEC game. This is hugely controversial because almost half the league has a traditional in-state rival that serves as their current P5 opponent (GA/Tech, Florida/FSU, S.Carolina/Clemson, Kentucky/Louisville, etc.). The teams who don't want the P5 opponent rule includes teams like State and Missouri who want to soften the schedule after 9 SEC games to give themselves a better shot at a winning season. The word I hear is that the P5 rule will be enforced because of TV demands. Ole Miss has some pretty attractive P5 opponents lined up, including USC. I've heard that Carter is on the side of dropping the additional P5 team, but I hope i stays so we don't have to endure more Tulsa-type games.
With no divisions, the SEC Championship game will stay in place but match the top 2 SEC teams. There's a big chance of a rematch, much like what happened in the Big 12 this year when TCU beat Kansas State. Several conferences didn't really want a championship game with the new playoff system (PAC12, ACC, etc.) but it's a big money maker for the SEC and Big10 so the decision was made to continue playing conference championship games.
All of those questions about SEC scheduling will be addressed at the SEC meetings in Destin this spring.
Big National Changes for 2024
Besides the conference expansion shake-ups, 2024 will be the first year of a 12-team playoff. As you will remember, there are 6 guaranteed slots - one for each P5 conference champion and one for the top G5 team. The other 6 slots will come from at large teams. For the first time, teams seeded 5-12 will play playoff games on campus. This is something the Big10 has wanted for years - especially if a warm weather SEC team like LSU has to go play at Michigan State in December.
The thing that most people haven't realized is the way bowls and post-season scheduling will be affected starting in 2024. The current access bowls (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Fiesta and Peach) will host the quarterfinals and semifinals. The national championship game will be still be done via bid, just as it is today. Remember that the Georgia/TCU game was held in Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles and next year's game will be in Houston. As of yet, the decision on which access bowls host the quarters and which have the semis hasn't been decided, but it will rotate among them each year.
I don't know why it hasn't been publicized yet, but I found out the schedule for the first 12-game playoff. These are actual dates, but the particular sites aren't finalized yet other than the National Championship Game being in Atlanta. Here it is:
Conference championship games will be played during the weekend of December 7, 2024. That's a week after the regular season ends, just like it is today.
First-round on-campus games will be played the weekend of December 21 with seed 5 hosting 12, seed 6 hosting 11, seed 7 hosting 10 and seed 8 hosting seed 9. Currently the networks are thinking that one game will happen on Friday night December 20 and the other three at noon, 4pm and 8pm on Saturday.
The second round will happen on Saturday, December 28. These will include the winners of round 1 against seeds 1-4 at the site of four of the access bowls (e.g. Peach, Cotton, Fiesta and Orange). There is also the probability that one of those games will move to Friday night and then the other 3 will play on Saturday at noon, 4 and 8.
The semifinals will happen on Monday, January 6 at the site of the 2 remaining access bowls (Rose, Cotton). Yes - the networks are looking to present a playoff doubleheader on a Monday night. This is to avoid direct competition with the NFL playoffs that weekend.
The final is set for Monday, January 20, 2025 in Atlanta. That night happens to be Martin Luther King Day and it's also in his hometown of Atlanta, so there are many, many implications. The feeling is that the Martin Luther King holiday weekend would make travel much easier and encourage a higher TV audience. It seems that MLK Day is the target for future college national championship games.
If you pay attention to that schedule you will notice a bombshell. College football is abandoning New Years. The 12-game playoff officially de-emphasizes the bowls because they are moving all of the majors off the New Years holiday unless New Years falls on a Saturday. Again, nobody has mentioned this yet but it is gigantic news.
Starting on New Years Day 2025 there will still be bowls, but instead of the Rose, Orange, Cotton you will see the Citrus, Gator, Las Vegas, etc. The smaller bowls are still a huge TV draw and are money makers for the networks so they will stay. But no traditional major bowls on New Years for the first time in over 100 years is staggering news.
Finally, a couple of inside things that are happening because of the 2024 shake-up:
Last year the Rose Bowl made what they portrayed as a generous and magnanimous decision to abandon their traditional New Years afternoon slot for the good of football. What really happened is that this schedule was leaked to them and they discovered that unless they agreed to change they would be left out of the playoffs. Instead of USC vs Ohio State, the Rose Bowl would have to settle for 8-3 Arizona State vs 9-2 Minnesota on New Years afternoon. It was no accident that the National Championship game this January was played across town in Sofi Stadium and not in Pasadena. The signal was sent by college football and received by the Rose Bowl people.
The latest inside thing is that the network rivalries and wars between Disney (ESPN) and Fox are heating up and will only get hotter. Part of the agreement to let Texas and Oklahoma leave a year early to join the SEC was that Fox demanded that the 2024 game between Oklahoma and Michigan be moved from Norman to Ann Arbor so Fox could televise it as a Big10 home game. To soften the blow, the return game when Michigan travels to Norman will happen in 2027, but Fox insisted that they get the first game of that series. Going back to the SEC's additional P5 game discussion, the network question might become a huge factor in scheduling in the future.
