Why College Football Playoff Championship Game Must Be on Monday

If you scanned social media Monday in advance of the CFP national championship game, there were probably more remarks about how the game had no buzz than there were comments about the actual game itself.

Among the NFL playoffs, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the presidential inauguration, the hype leading up to the national title game got comparatively swallowed up. 

Another common refrain was why the game had to be on a Monday as opposed to the weekend. The simple answer for this? The Shield.

The NFL effectively takes up every relevant weekend window from mid-December through mid-January. College football is popular with Americans, but it’s not the NFL, and competing with the league is not a viable option.

The first round of the CFP was on a weekend when two of the four games were head-to-head with the NFL. Penn State vs. SMU and Clemson vs. Texas drew 6.4 million and 8.6 million viewers, respectively. The NFL games in those windows, Texans-Chiefs and Steelers-Ravens, averaged 15.5 million viewers. In windows not up against the NFL, Tennessee–Ohio State drew 14.3 million viewers, and the night before Indiana–Notre Dame averaged 13.4 million.

ESPN has proved it can draw football viewers Monday nights, with Monday Night Football, a college football showcase on Labor Day, and past national title games as strong evidence of its success. The Monday time slot also gives the CFP title game the opportunity to have festivities throughout the weekend for visiting fans. 

The other recurring criticism on social media is that the CFP drags on far too long. 

Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt tweeted his displeasure with the format Monday, saying, “The mismanagement of CFB has been egregious.” He suggested moving up the national championship to Jan. 1. 

OutKick founder Clay Travis said the semis should be played Jan. 1 instead of the second week of January. “In order to make that happen you have to adjust the schedule. Either drop the conference title games and use that week for the playoffs—I’d do that and expand to 14 or 16 teams personally—or you have to start the season a week or so earlier to make the schedule work,” Travis told Front Office Sports. 

On Sports Media Watch, site founder Jon Lewis made the case for moving the national championship game from Monday to Friday. While he noted Monday nights traditionally have more TV viewers than Fridays, he argued the Ohio State–Miami BCS national title game in 2003 drew a massive audience on a Friday night and reasoned it could be worthwhile to shorten the 10- or 11-day window between the semifinals and the championship.