Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n“Yet there was the CFP earlier this week, announcing next year’s quarterfinals would move off New Year’s Eve to avoid a scheduling conflict with a regular season NFL game. That’s the game plan, everyone: a malleable CFP, that works for all \u2015 including the NFL.”<\/p>\n
He continued on to point out how simple it would be to fix the timing of the CFP in a way that benefits everyone. Sure, it would upend some college football tradition, but tradition has largely gone out the window in this new CFP era anyway.<\/p>\n
“Why wouldn\u2019t the 34 presidents of the SEC and Big Ten simply move back the season one week \u2014 to the current Week Zero spot \u2014 and play championship week on Thanksgiving weekend?” Hayes continued. “The first person who screeches\u00a0\u201ctradition!\u201d\u00a0gets flogged with a wet noodle.”<\/p>\n
“Gimme a break. Tradition?\u00a0You\u2019ve dissected the sport into unwieldy Power quarters, eaten your own in the process, opened the doors to unregulated free agency and all but ignored academics.\u00a0Tradition limped off the road a couple of exits back, bub.”<\/p>\n
“The week after Thanksgiving is the first round of the CFP on campus. The second week of December \u2014 where bowl games can still be used and celebrated \u2014 is for the quarterfinals. The third week of December is the semifinals, and New Year\u2019s Day is your national championship game.”<\/p>\n
“I think we can all agree the best place for the national championship game \u2014 on a day college football has owned forever \u2014 is the majestic Rose Bowl. Every single season, at 4 p.m. ET., with the sun setting on the picturesque San Gabriels at the start of the second half.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s your nod to tradition. I’m getting goosebumps just writing it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb. 16, 2026, 6:04 a.m. PT In 2026, Year 5 of the Lincoln Riley era, USC football fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[95878,7,6,84,98210,96358,96156,96027,95896,105666,95888,96163,96839,97971,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-756565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-playoffs","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-nfl-playoffs","12":"tag-sstssportscollegetrojansfootball","13":"tag-sstsnfootball","14":"tag-tagcollege-football-playoff","15":"tag-tagcollege-sports","16":"tag-tagnational-sports","17":"tag-tagnew-years-day","18":"tag-tagnfl","19":"tag-tagsam-darnold","20":"tag-tagsouthern-california-trojans-football","21":"tag-tagsuper-bowl-60","22":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116081893389880565","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}