NFL to stage multiple Saturday games that compete with first round of College Football Playoff
First it came for the NBA on Christmas.
Now, for a second straight year, the NFL is taking on the College Football Playoff.
Fox Sports announced on Monday that it will broadcast two games on Saturday, Dec. 20 — an NFC East clash between the Commanders and Eagles followed by an NFC North matchup between the Packers and Bears.
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Times weren't announced. But one thing is certain. The games will compete for viewers' eyeballs with the College Football Playoff.
The 2025 season will mark the second year of the expanded CFP to 12 teams. That means a first round of four games featuring the eight teams that don't earn a bye into the quarterfinals. One of those games will be played on Friday, Dec. 19. The other three are scheduled for Dec. 20.
Like the NFL's Dec. 20 plans, the times of those games hasn't been set. But three consecutive college football games makes for an all-day affair that will go up against the NFL matchups that are certainly being scheduled as potential high-stakes games in the NFC playoff race.
There will be a lot of meaningful football for viewers to choose from. And, as its wont to do, the NFL is showing little regard for clashes with the competition.
NFL's evolving stance on competing with NCAA, NBA
The NFL has been doing this for years in regard to the NBA. For decades, Christmas was almost strictly the U.S. sports turf of the NBA, which stages a slate of games on the holiday as one of the marquee days on its calendar.
The NFL is king has has no qualms about getting in the way of the competition. (Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images)
(Diamond Images via Getty Images)
If Christmas fell on a Sunday, the NFL would occasionally schedule a regular season game on the holiday. And before the expansion of the league's regular season schedule past the holiday, the NFL for the most part avoided scheduling playoff games on Christmas. In those instances, playoff games would be played on Saturday and Monday.
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That all changed in 2020, when the NFL scheduled the Vikings and Saints to play on Christmas. And that wasn't even a Sunday. That year, Christmas fell on a Friday. Ever since, the league has continued to expand its Christmas footprint, with at least two games scheduled for Christmas regardless of the day of the week.
Now the league's taking the same approach with college football. The NFL has long steered clear of Saturdays during the college football regular season. But with the stakes at their highest, the league is not ceding late-December Saturdays to the CFP.
Why does the NFL do this? Because it can, of course. The NFL is king. And it knows that viewers are going to tune in no matter the conflict with other sports or the concept of spending time with friends and family on holidays not in front of a TV.
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With the expansion of the league's broadcast and streaming partners and the higher stakes and paydays that come with those partnerships, this is now the new norm.
The good news for the CFP? Last year wasn't a wash despite the competition from the NFL.
Last year's Ravens-Steelers and Texans-Chiefs matchups won the ratings battle on Dec. 21 with an average of 15.4-plus million viewers each.
The four CFP games — one on Friday and three on Saturday — averaged 10.6 million average viewers in a strong showing in the first year of the format.
But the two games that went head to head with the NFL brought up the rear. Clemson-Texas (8.6 million) and Penn State-SMU (6.4 million) paled in comparison to the Friday (Notre Dame-Indiana, 13.4 million) and Saturday night (Ohio State-Tennessee, 14.3 million) games that didn't go up against the NFL.
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