Moving to primetime: Orange Bowl announces upcoming game moving from New Year’s Day slot
Published:
College football fans should appreciate this move.
The 86th annual Orange Bowl was previously scheduled to be played on New Year’s Day in the early afternoon but is now being bumped up on the schedule. While New Year’s Day games are great, there are already set to be a host of games played that day. Moving the Orange Bowl will now allow the game to get more focus and decrease the logjam of games set to be played on New Year’s Day — particularly around Noon, which was when this Orange Bowl game would have been played.
The upcoming Orange Bowl will now be played on Monday, December 30 at 8 p.m. ET and will be broadcast by ESPN.
The Orange Bowl is not in the College Football Playoff rotation this season. Last year, the game was a Playoff game that featured Alabama and Oklahoma. This season, the Orange Bowl is set to feature the ACC champion (as long as that team is not selected for the College Football Playoff) and the highest ranked, available team from either the SEC, the Big Ten or Notre Dame. If the ACC champion is in the Playoff, the Orange Bowl will select the next highest-ranked team from the league to compete in the game.
Hard Rock Stadium is the host for the Orange Bowl.
“The Capital One Orange Bowl was presented with a unique opportunity by our partners, including ESPN, Capital One, the ACC, Big Ten, SEC, Notre Dame, the Miami Dolphins and the CFP, to play this year’s game on Monday, December 30 in primetime,” said José C. Romano, president and chair of the Orange Bowl Committee. “With other bowl games planned for the early afternoon window on January 1, this move enables our game to stand alone as the only bowl game staged on Monday night, when fans are used to viewing football games. We are confident this traditional start time will be a positive for both the out of town and local fans who attend our game, as well as the television viewers across the country.”
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
