The worst thing going in college football right now isn't the NIL, it is the year long schedule and on Tuesday it got way worse.
There are a lot of issues in college football these days, including NIL, the transfer portal, Group of 5 teams, and several other issues. However, none of those issues is even close to being the worst problem.
That award goes to the schedule, and second place might as well be 50th place since nothing comes close to being that egregious.
On Tuesday, the schedule somehow got worse.
The schedule is the root of all that is bad in college football. If the powers that be were able to come up with a reasonable post-season timeline, it would set the market for the rest of the year. Transfer portal would make sense, National Signing Day would be slotted correctly, and coaches wouldn't have to abandon their playoff teams.
The NCAA made changes to the schedule, but they just changed it the wrong way.
In 2026, the postseason dates will be the following:
- First Round
- Friday December 18th
- Saturday December 19th
- Quarterfinals
- Wednesday December 30th
- *No Games on New Year's Eve because of NFL Thursday Night Football*
- Friday January 1st
- Semifinals
- Thursday January 14th
- Friday January 15th
- National Championship
- Monday January 25th, 2027.
What is that?
Mind you, Ohio State and Michigan square off on Saturday, Nov. 28, with the final regular-season game of the year. Factoring in the Conference Championship Games, the NCAA is "squeezing" five necessary postgame seasons into eight weeks.
That is absolutely absurd.
The National Championship game is exactly eight weeks from the final game of the regular season.
For context, the NFL's Super Bowl is on Feb 8, 2026. The final regular season in the league was Jan 4, 2026.
They fit four postseason games into, you guessed it, four weeks!
What a concept.
The College Football schedule is, and continues to be, an unmitigated disaster, and it truly is the spawn of all of the things that are wrong with the sport in this era.
The Playoff schedule at the micro level is insane, but it is also insane at the macro level. In 2025, to win the National Championship, Ohio State would have had to play in 17 games. The timeframe from Week 1 to the National Championship was 21.5 weeks.
In 2026, if Ohio State wins the National Championship, they will play in either 16 or 17 games and will do it over the course of, again, 21.5 weeks.
That's a total of a month and a half wasted on bye weeks and time off.
In a crazy, hypothetical, fairy tale world where the Playoffs started the week after the conference championship games, they would need just four weeks to get the Playoffs in.
Four weeks from the Conference Championship Games would have been Jan 6.
If they want to get even crazier, move the start of the season up just one week to their weird "Week 0," and then the National Championship is on New Year's Day. Then, the transfer portal window opens on Jan 2.
If it seems like that makes too much sense and is an easy solution, you would be right.
Instead, the NCAA said, "No, let's extend it longer."
This schedule is a disaster and needs to be changed as soon as possible.