Paul Finebaum seems to be channeling his inner Joel Klatt — or perhaps it’s the other way around.
The oft-controversial ESPN college football personality recently echoed Klatt’s call to move the Army-Navy game to the start of the season. Klatt, Fox Sports’ lead college football color analyst, argued last month that the Army-Navy weekend should be cleared for an earlier College Football Playoff start while the annual rivalry game should be moved to Week 0 instead.
Klatt doubled down this week, and Finebaum clearly took note. While he didn’t name-drop Klatt’s idea on The Matt Barrie Show, Finebaum echoed a similar sentiment, suggesting the game needs a new spot on the calendar.
“We’re wasting a week,” Finebaum said. “I know I’m gonna upset somebody, but the week of the Army-Navy game needs to be the playoffs. That is a wasted Saturday. What do we have? We have the Army-Navy game and the Heisman [Trophy Ceremony]. We can’t figure that out some other time?”
Barrie immediately recognized that Klatt had initially suggested moving Army-Navy to the season’s opening week and starting the College Football Playoff a week earlier, right after conference championship(s) weekend.
“I agree,” Finebaum noted.
It’s not often that ESPN and Fox analysts find common ground, but here, they are united in their critique of college football’s calendar, especially when it comes to a game neither network broadcasts.
Still, there’s a sense that something needs to change about the current football calendar— not just because of the transfer portal, but also to address the scheduling gaps that leave teams like Arizona State idle for weeks, fueling narratives about “rust” for teams with automatic byes.
But here’s where the idea starts to lose some steam: suggesting moving a sacred part of college football’s fabric. It’s a delicate move, especially when the cold weather and nostalgic traditions tied to this rivalry are so ingrained in its charm. The game has always been a symbol of college football’s final, cold-weather ritual, and that might be hard to replicate before Labor Day.
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