Can College Football Playoff Scheduling Be Fixed?

The Lane Kiffin coaching saga, where a reality show-esque drama played out over several weeks between Ole Miss and the LSU Tigers, highlighted some big, systemic problems. How the sport handles the last month and a half of the regular season, conference championships, transfer portal, signing day and, of course, the College Football Playoff, is completely nonsensical.

It's impossible to fit all these important dates and milestones into one six-week period without upsetting the apple cart in some significant way. Obviously, the most impactful example this season is Kiffin leaving a program that is currently in the playoff field to join another program. And it made sense, at least from LSU's side.

National Signing Day is in the first week of December. As Penn State has just recently learned, it's vitally important to have a new coaching staff in place before signing day in order to convince recruits to join your program. 

RELATED: Penn State Just Nuked Their Own Program For Nothing

Kiffin had to make his decision quickly, or LSU could risk being shut out with top high school players. So he did. This is unavoidable to some extent, with the way the current schedule is formatted. But USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley had some ideas of how to fix it, which fans and players might like.

Oct 11, 2025; Los Angeles, California, USA;  USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley (wearing white visor) celebrates along with defensive end coach Shaun Nua after kicker Ryon Sayeri (48) hit a 54-yard field goal in the second half against the Michigan Wolverines at United Airlines Field at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Lincoln Riley Has Suggestion For Late Season Schedule

Riley spoke this week on USC's Trojans Live show about how to fix the College Football Playoff, and he had one specific schedule suggestion that would immediately improve the sport: move the National Championship game.

"I mean, there there's only good in my opinion, one way to fix all of this," Riley said. "And you have to you gotta have the national championship game somewhere around Christmas to New Year's. Like that's that's the only way it's gonna work. Because you got three things that are competing right now: You have high schools finishing their year, signing day, the high school calendar. You have college academic calendars and people getting in and out, and you have semesters and quarter systems and you got all different calendars there. And then you have a college football season, and then you have the differing roster decisions that are having to happen. And the hard thing is like this isn't professional you know, professional league, you end the season, you make all the rules where you do all the stuff after. It's easy because you don't have anything else competing.

"Here you're trying to balance things like to me, that's the only way that it's ever gonna get fixed is you got to move you gotta move the national championship game. And obviously you're gonna have to make adjustments to a season to be able to play out a full season, or do you reduce games? I mean, people are gonna have to figure that out, but like this will not get fixed until that happens. Like you're going to always sacrifice something until that happens and that'll be for the decision makers to figure out."

So how could this work? 

Well, the season would have to be compressed or moved up, obviously. But here's how it could work, with a National Championship game being played on January 1st. 

Championship:

Wed, Jan 1 — National Championship

Semifinals (10–12 days earlier):

Sat, Dec 21 — Semi 1

Mon, Dec 23 — Semi 2

Quarterfinals (7–8 days earlier):

Fri, Dec 13 — QF 1

Sat, Dec 14 — QF 2

Sun, Dec 15 — QF 3

Mon, Dec 16 — QF 4

First Round (campus sites):

Fri, Dec 6 — Two games

Sat, Dec 7 — Two games

Selection Sunday:

Sun, Dec 1

Would this make everyone happy? No, of course not. But it would at least continue the momentum from the end of the regular season. It would make New Years the culmination of the year, as it should be. And with the portal moving to January 2-16, it would allow players to stay with their programs throughout the postseason. If National Signing Day were moved to around the same time period, it could also allow coaches, like Kiffin, to finish out their season before jumping ship to more lucrative pastures. 

There are still issues with scheduling around academic calendars, but who on earth cares about academics in collegiate athletics at this point? 

Will it happen? Probably not. But at least it's a thought.