CFP Director Rich Clark: Moving first round up one week ‘not off the table’

Nobody, not even those at the highest levels of college football, knows how the College Football Playoff will look next year.

Conference administrators have until mid-January to agree on any possible expansion proposals. If there’s no consensus, the 12-team format will be run back in 2026.

But as was made clear in Year 1 of the 12-team playoff, and will likely be made even clearer this weekend, the current CFP schedule is far from ideal—the first two rounds of the CFP conflict directly with late-season NFL matchups. Last year, the NFL predictably wiped the floor with the CFP in viewership.

The two sides didn’t do much to remedy the situation for this weekend. Instead of having just an hour of a non-competing window with the NFL, the CFP will have 90 minutes this year. Hooray.

Luckily, CFP Director Rich Clark acknowledges this is an issue and is actively looking towards a better schedule for next season. Speaking with Nicole Auerbach of NBC Sports, Clark said that moving the first round up by one week is “not off the table.” Such a move would throw a wrench in scheduling for the Army-Navy game, but would entirely avoid NFL competition as the league could not legally televise games that weekend. Per the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the NFL cannot broadcast games on Saturday until the third weekend of December.

While the move makes sense on paper, Clark told NBC Sports that conference commissioners and university presidents are reluctant to move the first round up a week for player health and safety reasons. That argument seems a bit antiquated if there are active discussions about expanding the CFP to as many as 28 teams, which would almost certainly require moving the first round to the second week of December, but that’s college football bureaucracy for you.

Ultimately, this will all come down to what conference administrators decide to do with the playoff format. But in the never-ending chase for more TV dollars, it seems pretty clear there’s an opening on the second Saturday in December, which currently lacks meaningful football outside of Army-Navy. Given how dollars and cents tend to drive decision-making in college sports, it would seem to be a “when,” not “if,” the first round of the CFP moves up a week.