The College Football Playoff organizing committee is looking to give the crowd a new holiday tradition.
The College Football Playoff semifinals will now be played on Dec. 31 – New Year's Eve. Although this date does not seem very convenient, as potential viewers may be at work during the day and caught up in party preparations in the evening, the College Football Playoff executive director sees this as an opportunity to change the sport's postseason.
"We really do think we're going to change the paradigm of New Year's Eve," Bill Hancock said of the New Year's Eve matchups, according to Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch.
Semifinal festivities kickoff at 4 p.m. ET on New Year's Eve, with the later game scheduled to start at 8 p.m.
| Date | Time (ET) | Bowl |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday. Dec. 31 | Noon | Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl |
| 4 p.m. | College Football Playoff Semifinal | |
| 8 p.m. | College Football Playoff Semifinal | |
| Friday Jan. 1 | 1 p.m. | Fiesta Bowl |
| 5 p.m. | Rose Bowl presented by Northwestern Mutual | |
| 8:30 p.m. | Allstate Sugar Bowl |
Holding the semifinal games on Dec. 31 was an original part of the 12-year, $5.6 billion deal that ESPN struck with the College Football Playoff, says ESPN, but network officials sought to change the semifinals from New Year's Eve to Jan. 2 this year to take advantage of the free Saturday.
"We approached the CFP with a one-year change – and really a one-year-only opportunity – because of a complete quirk in the calendar," Ilan Ben-Hanan, ESPN's vice president of programming and acquisitions, told Sports Illustrated.
"With Saturday being a traditional college football day, we thought it could be a great one-time opportunity to have the semifinals fall on Jan. 2. You would have the Rose and Sugar and Fiesta (bowls) on Jan. 1 as it already is scheduled and then you would move what is the current New Year's Eve schedule to Jan. 2. We approached the CFP with (the idea), the CFP vetted it and they decided to stick with the regularly scheduled calendar, which is fine, and we move forward."
Ben-Hanan said that, despite multiple conversations with Hancock last winter, the CFP executives would not budge.
ESPN expects that, because of the date, viewership will not reach the cable records set last season, noting that the games will also be facing competition from other prime time holiday programming.
"It will certainly be more challenging year over year with the New Year's dates," said Ben-Hanan. "It would be total smoke-blowing to say we expect the numbers to be the same. I think we have hope that over the two days the ratings can be up year over year.
"There may be some people tuning over (to New Year's Eve programming), but I hope the people in charge of the remote controls are going to be deft and switch back and forth if needed," Ben-Hanan continued.
"It would be funny to watch the minute-by-minute ratings if that happened between 11:59, midnight and 12:01. There is certainly no precedent to it."