Drink up: College Football Playoff backpedals, moves semifinals off New Year's Eve
Our New Year’s Eve nightmare is over. We can return to drinking heavily straight through “Auld Lang Syne.”
In a stunning display of common sense not typically associated with the game’s power brokers, the College Football Playoff committee announced Thursday that the national semifinals will be be moved off Dec. 31.
Taking over for the old BCS system — everybody professed to hate it, but it was so much better than what we had previously — the CFP launched in 2014 with a plan to change the way football fans ring in the new year. Not always, but sometimes the two semifinal matchups would be played back to back on New Year’s Eve.
A sport usually crippled by tradition suddenly wanted to start a new one. It was equally silly and stupid.
Probably since Prohibition was lifted in 1933, New Year’s Eve has been one of the big nights out on every calendar. Most people spend it sipping — chugging? — alcohol anticipating a countdown-to-midnight kiss.
Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff committee, didn’t listen originally when so many people told him this was a terrible idea. People dress up on New Year’s Eve. They eat a good meal. They sip champagne. They disclose soon-to-be-broken resolutions with family, friends and strangers alike.
Most other nights, yes, fans want to huddle around a TV and binge on pigskin. But not on New Year’s Eve.
The 2018, 2019, 2024 and 2025 semifinal games will no longer be scheduled for Dec. 31 those years. They’ll now be played the Saturday before New Year’s Eve. When people think college football, they think Saturday.
The first season of the College Football Playoff, 2014, saw the two national semifinals played New Year’s Day, which is already associated with bowl games — has been for eons. But in Year 2, those games moved to New Year’s Eve. Ratings dropped 36 percent as a result. That’s what this is all about, of course: ratings.
Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Men like Hancock don’t like to admit when they’re dead wrong. However, this change represents quite a 180.
“Once we settled on this as the best possible alternative, then the rest of the dominoes fell,” he told Heather Dinich of ESPN.com.
Even with the drastic dropoff in viewership, there were members of the CFP committee — some far removed from reality, presumably — wanting Hancock to stick with New Year’s Eve. They were outnumbered, though.
“I did hear from several who said, ‘Bill, stay with it,'” he said. “But most said, ‘It just doesn’t work for me.'”
They’ll never say so on record, but the New Year’s Eve idea was ridiculous in the first place. The CFP was speaking out of both sides of its mouth. One day, it was preserving the time-honored history of the Rose Bowl, which has always been resistant to change. Then the next day, it was trying to reshape New Year’s.
“We just took our time, looked at the data and realized that we had tried to do something special on New Year’s Eve,” Hancock said. “But we could do better. I’m so happy because this is so great for the fans.”
Hancock revealed that it wasn’t unusual for his fellow grocery-store shoppers to voice displeasure to him.
“We wanted to honor the traditions of the game, including the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl,” he said.
Thankfully, the CFP didn’t get greedy and kept both semis on the same day. A complaint of the old BCS was its break-up of the big games — Orange Bowl one night, Sugar the next night, Fiesta the night after that.
“We considered several options, one of which was having the semifinals on different days,” Hancock said. “But we concluded that wouldn’t be fair because one team would have an additional day to prepare.”
Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Ideally, the semis would be held on New Year’s Day annually. For decades, that’s when the major bowls were played. It’s a holiday. Very few people have to work. The NFL typically avoids Jan. 1 altogether. Fanatics look forward to being in their homes all day and watching college football action morning, noon and night.
Not to mention that so many of them are nursing hangovers from the night before. You know, New Year’s Eve.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned Rose Bowl has wrecked any such plan. In 2017, 2020 and 2023, the semis will indeed be held on New Year’s Day. Why? Because the Rose hosts one of them. The Sugar gets the other.
But when the Rose isn’t scheduled to host one — 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2025, — the semis will be played in the Dec. 27-31 window. The Rose refuses to move off its day (Jan. 1) and time (1:30 p.m. Pacific). “The Grandaddy of Them All” wields too much power in this process. The CFP suffers. So do fans.
New Year’s Eve is only a holiday if New Year’s Day happens to fall on a weekend. Most people work Dec. 31.
Last year’s semifinal between Clemson and Oklahoma — two teams with rabid followings and national appeal — kicked off at 4:10 p.m. Eastern. From coast to coast, worker bees were still in their office cubicles.
It’s still not a perfect system, but it’s an improvement over the prior setup. We’re still stuck with the semis on New Year’s Eve this season. At least it’s a Saturday, though. The 9-to-5 crowd can make plans to tune in much more easily. Still, bar owners won’t be pleased. NYE is the industry’s most profitable night.
Midnight. New Year’s Eve. The song asks: “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”
We won’t forget your pompousness, College Football Playoff committee. But let’s drink up and be friends.
John Crist is the senior writer for Saturday Down South, a member of the FWAA and a voter for the Heisman Trophy. Send him an e-mail, like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.
