Future College Football Playoff schedules feature long break post-quarterfinals appeared first on ClutchPoints. Add ClutchPoints as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The College Football Playoff is one of the best events in sports every year, and that was on full display once again this year. There were a handful of epic games throughout the CFP, and Indiana capped off their historic run with a classic title game victory over Miami.
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While the relatively new 12-team format has brought fans more good games in recent years, fans have had one consistent gripe with the new format. The playoff simply takes too long, with periods between games that drag on for days and days. In this most recent iteration of the CFP, the first game of the first round was played on Dec. 19 and the title game was played on Jan. 19.
In the coming years, that problem is only going to get worse. The schedules for the next two CFPs was released on Tuesday, with an astonishing 38 days between the first round and the title game on Jan. 25, via On3 Sports. The following season, the title game will be played on Jan. 24.
Fan interest is one of the issues with this long, dragged-out playoff, as some fans start to lose interest when there is nine or 10 days between games with so few teams remaining. The NFL playoffs also get going shortly after the quarterfinals, taking some of the attention away from the CFP unnecessarily.
The bigger issue with this is the overlap in the CFP calendar, which will only continue to get worse in the coming years. The transfer portal, which now only has one window in January, opens just after the quarterfinals finish up and teams that didn’t make the CFP are fully focused on building their teams for the following season.
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This presents two problems. First, teams still in the CFP after the quarterfinal stage are forced to split time between gameplanning and recruiting. Secondly, a lot of these top teams have to deal with coordinators leaving for head coaching jobs elsewhere and taking some of their staff with them, and those guys are forced to do split duty during the CFP as well.
Ole Miss with Lane Kiffin, who left for LSU at the end of the regular season, is obviously an extreme example, but even a team like Oregon had to manage both of its coordinators taking other jobs during the CFP this year. This could be avoided by moving the CFP back and having it end closer to New Year’s Day, but it appears the problem is only getting worse in the coming seasons.
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