College football season should end on Jan. 1, head coach says

College football should embrace a schedule like the NFL with fewer bye weeks and a season that ends on New Year’s Day, Oregon head coach Dan Lanning has said in new comments ahead of the 2025 kickoff.

“I’d be in favor of creating our playoff system to mirror every other playoff system in sports,” Lanning said to ESPN.

“The season’s over, and the playoffs start shortly after. The long break is something I’m not crazy about. I wish we played every single Saturday in college football. I wish college football ended Jan. 1.”

That long layover from the end of college football’s regular season to the start of bowl season has been a hallmark of the sport’s schedule for decades, especially for better teams that played in the more prestigious bowls.

But by making the season even longer by expanding the College Football Playoff, having that time off until the start of the postseason is too long for teams, Lanning believes.

He speaks from some unpleasant experience, after his Oregon team played an undefeated regular season, won the Big Ten Championship, and was the No. 1 seed in the playoff.

But after waiting through its first-round bye, the Ducks didn’t look their usual selves in a 41-21 loss to eventual national champion Ohio State in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal.

They weren’t alone, either. The other three teams ranked 2 through 4 that also earned first-round playoff byes lost their first games, including SEC champion Georgia, Big 12 champion Arizona State, and Group of Five selection Boise State.

Ohio State and Notre Dame, on the other hand, played games on campus in the first round and met in the national championship game, leading some analysts and coaches to wonder if just getting right into the postseason might be better for a team’s momentum.

“It’s almost a month. That’s a long time,” Lanning said of Oregon’s postseason wait.

Waiting so long to finish a season is also seriously cutting into coaches’ ability to get a proper start on recruiting their future rosters.

“January is supposed to be your month that you’re able to go on the road as a coach and recruit,” Lanning said. “... I don’t think the season aligns with the calendar.”

Lanning said he would be interested in the college football season beginning in the traditional Week 0 period in late August, and there’s actually some interest across the sport in potentially doing just that.

That comes after a report that emerged late in June that some college football leaders were making a push internally to move the traditional kickoff up one week.

Whether that becomes a reality depends on what would likely be a prolonged bureaucratic fight for the sport’s decision makers.

But it’s a move that at least one coach at a major program would like to see get done.

(ESPN)

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