There are plenty of ideas on how to "fix" issues within college football in the modern era, but Dan Lanning thinks his addresses the biggest problem: playoff scheduling.
The Oregon Ducks head coach told Yahoo Sports this week from Big Ten media days that the bye weeks built into the current format are an inherent disadvantage for teams earning the top seeds. He also thinks the playoff goes much further into January than it should, disrupting traditional scheduling.
"College football season should end Jan. 1," he said. "That solves a lot of the problems that exist."
To accomplish that, he wants to move the entire regular season up, compress the playoff schedule from seven weeks to five, eliminating the layoff that he believes put his team at a disadvantage. Oregon had nearly four weeks off before playing Ohio State in the quaterfinal game at the Rose Bowl. The Ducks got blown out, 41-21.
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"All four teams that had a bye lost. There’s something to that," Lanning said.
Lanning did say that Ohio State was an "unbelievable team," but believes that the extended break hurt his team's momentum and made it harder to gear up for an intensity-filled game against a tough opponent.
"You saw a team that wasn’t resting and a team that was," Lanning explained. "In the second half, we were a much different team, but it was too much to overcome. So if there’s anything that I would change, it’s playing these games faster and sooner. College football belongs on Saturday, not the NFL."
His idea would see the playoff start much earlier, say the first or second weekend in December. That would bring the semifinals closer to New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, then the championship game could be moved back to early January as well. To accomplish this, he'd want the season to start in the "Week Zero" window. To him, this would have several benefits: removing the layoffs, yes, but also limiting competition from NFL games. The new transfer portal period would also come after the end of the playoff, with most believing it'll fall around early-mid January.
"It solves a lot, whether it’s the portal being open during the season or what," Lanning says. "I just wish we played a similar playoff to every other model that exists in every other sport where you play every Saturday and you get knocked out. There might be byes, but it’s not going to be more than 14 days off as opposed to what we had this past season."
"If anyone ever asks me what’s the one thing I could change in college football," he added, "it’s always that."
Lanning's proposal has some merit; the extended layoff for teams with a bye is a bizarre quirk of the new scheduling format. Teams that get a bye into the NFL playoffs don't wait for 3–4 weeks before playing. Neither do teams in baseball or basketball. Even then, an extended break for baseball teams with a first-round bye has been blamed on early postseason exists.
Does that mean the Ducks lost to Ohio State exclusively because of the long break? Of course not. The Buckeyes were the best team in the country last season, and put their foot down immediately. But it couldn't have helped.
The original bowl season format was primarily developed to track the end of the school year. Student-athletes would be in finals in early-mid December, making a layoff necessary before most bowl games started in mid-late December. But we've long since stopped pretending that college football players are students, so interfering with finals shouldn't be a concern. Move it all up a little bit, and you can help eliminate the long breaks that clearly bother teams and coaches.
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