The College Football Playoff made a big bet in the first year of its 12-team tournament, scheduling two opening-round games against the NFL.
Rather than clearing out for the NFL on the Saturday after conference championship weekend, the CFP scheduled two games in the slot long held by pro football.
In a recent interview on The Varsity podcast, CFP executive director Rich Clark acknowledged the potential for greater viewership outside that window and admitted the CFP will look long and hard at adjusting the schedule going forward.
“Obviously the NFL is supreme when it comes to sporting events and viewership. And we want to find where the best win-win solution is here,” Clark told host John Ourand.
“Right now we have two of our games that were bumping up on NFL games, so we want to see what’s the best way that we can adjust to make it so that viewers can see all that they want and not have to miss that NFL game, or more likely miss one of our games. So we’ll talk about that and see how we can adjust our schedule to make it more compatible for all viewers to see all that they possibly can. But it’s something that we’re going to need to look at.”
Clark revealed he met with Goodell in the lead-up to the first expanded CFP to discuss the matter. While Clark said Goodell was “very gracious” and granted him a long meeting, the CFP got crushed by the NFL doubleheader it faced.
Both NFL games averaged more than 15 million viewers on Dec. 21, while the noon ET Penn State-SMU game drew just over 6 million average viewers.
Especially with ESPN sublicensing two of those games to TNT, the CFP is at a disadvantage compared with big NFL games on broadcast television. Rather than try and be the David to the NFL’s Goliath, the CFP could book a Friday evening doubleheader and keep the noon Saturday kickoff. That would mean just one CFP game (likely the best one of the weekend) would have to compete with the NFL.
Everything is on the table as the CFP tries to thread the needle and please as many people as possible. Of course, its TV partners generate the revenue. So keeping ESPN happy goes a long way, and that likely means reconfiguring the schedule as time goes on.
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