How NFL 2026 schedule will impact the College Football Playoff TV ratings for third straight season
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How NFL 2026 schedule will impact the College Football Playoff TV ratings for third straight season originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The NFL did not get out of the way of the College Football Playoff for the third consecutive season.
The College Football Playoff first round opens on Friday, Dec. 18 with a single game before a triple-header on Dec. 19 in the 12 p.m., 3:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. time slots on ESPN. That conflicts directly with the NFL for the third time in three years.
Who did the NFL schedule that weekend? The Philadelphia Eagles will play the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks at 5 p.m. on Fox in Week 15, before a blockbuster prime-time matchup between the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills at 8:20 p.m. on CBS.
The NFL does not have games scheduled for Week 16 or Week 17, but there might be a Saturday game in Week 18.
The rest of the College Football Playoff does not conflict with the NFL directly. The quarterfinals are on Wednesday, Jan. 30 (Fiesta Bowl) and Friday, Jan. 1 (Cotton Bowl, Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl). That will precede Week 17 of the NFL season.
The CFP semifinals are on Thursday, Jan. 14 (Orange) and Friday, Jan. 15 (Sugar). That will lead into the NFL Wild Card weekend. The CFP championship is Monday, Jan. 25, which is one day after the NFL divisional playoffs.
MORE: Full 2026 NFL schedule featuring dates, times and networks for every game
How the NFL impacts the CFP ratings
In 2025, the NFL put a monster double-header in the middle of the first round of the College Football Playoff. The Eagles played the Commanders at 4:30 p.m. during Ole Miss' matchup against Tulane, and the Packers faced the Bears during the matchup between Oregon and James Madison. Look at the TV viewership for those five games:
NFL vs. CFP first-round games in 2025
| MATCHUP | TIME | VIEWERS |
| Packers-Bears | 7:30 p.m. | 21.34 (million) |
| Eagles-Commanders | 4:30 p.m. | 15.46 |
| Miami-Texas A&M | 12 p.m. | 14.78 |
| Tulane-Ole Miss | 3:30 p.m. | 6.24 |
| James Madison-Oregon | 7:30 p.m. | 4.36 |
With a stand-alone window, the matchup between the Hurricanes and Aggies – a 10-3 slugfest – had comparable TV ratings to the Eagles-Commanders matchup. Yet the Tulane-Ole Miss and JMU-Oregon games had close to half of the combined viewership as the matchup between the Packers and Bears in the prime-time window. Granted, those two CFP games had Group of 6 schools in one-sided matchups, but the point still stands.
The NFL did the same thing in the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff in 2024. Houston played Kansas City, and Pittsburgh played Baltimore during the first-round CFP triple-header that featured matchups between SMU-Penn State, Clemson-Texas, and Tennessee-Ohio State. That year, however, the NFL stayed out of the prime-time window and did not conflict with the matchup between the Volunteers and Buckeyes.
MORE: What are the best QB matchups on the 2026 NFL schedule?
Will a 24-team CFP change the scheduling?
There has been increased talk of College Football Playoff expansion – including rumors of an increase to a 24-team College Football Playoff. Would the NFL alter its scheduling if that's the case?
That should be a discussion point between the NFL and college football in the future, especially if there are more postseason games. This offseason, the NCAA's Football Oversight Committee recommended that the college football regular season start one week earlier – with Week 1 bumping up to Week 0. Perhaps that would lead to less NFL infringement on the College Football Playoff schedule, particularly the early rounds.
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