College Football Playoff announces Rose, Sugar Bowl for January 1

This is crazy

When the Southeastern Conference announced that its championship game would be scheduled on December 19, that seemed to be a guarantee that the Rose Bowl would not be played on January 1.

The College Football Playoff Selection Show would be held on Sunday, Dec. 20 — as was announced on Wednesday afternoon.

We were waiting for announcement of the rescheduled dates for the Rose and Sugar Bowls.

After all, since when are the big postseason bowls played less than two weeks after the final game of the regular season? Even if we weren’t in a pandemic, the athletes need a chance to regroup after the long and punishing regular season. It would make very little sense even under “normal” conditions. It’s good — even necessary — to allow athletes to get away from football for a little bit before the holidays, and then enable them to come back mentally fresh for the big finale to their season.

Yet, we’re not in a normal situation. We’re in a pandemic. We have just witnessed the various Power Five conferences stick to conference games plus only one nonconference games. Schools and conferences have nixed long-distance travel, which makes sense. They have been appropriately cautious in coordinating games, even though such an approach has sacrificed Group of Five and FCS schools who are now in even greater financial peril.

Everything about the way college football has approached the 2020 season in a pandemic has been cautious, with no one wanting to get too far ahead of the curve and trying to buy time to make decisions.

Naturally, the College Football Playoff was going to do the same thing. This was obvious… or so it seemed.

The College Football Playoff announced on Wednesday (shortly after disclosing that its selection show would indeed be on Sunday, Dec. 20) that it will try to play the Rose and Sugar Bowl semifinal games on January 1, with the title game on the regularly-scheduled Jan. 11 date:

Here is the full statement from the playoff:

There is no mention of moving the Rose or Sugar Bowls to campus sites, so that only one of the two playoff teams has to travel. The same applies for the national title game.

You realize what this means, right?

The College Football Playoff is asking teams to play their regular season and then move right into postseason preparation with no real break.

The College Football Playoff is asking teams to practice for their semifinal during the Christmas holiday, when — given the disruption in the schedule — it had a chance to give the players Christmas and New Year’s as a time to relax. The semifinal games could have been scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 9, meaning that the week of practice before the game could have begun on or near Jan. 2. The championship game could have been rescheduled for the weekend before the Super Bowl.

Most of all, the College Football Playoff is setting up a scenario in which the SEC champion — having played its conference championship game on Dec. 19 in Atlanta — then has to fly to two separate cities in the following three weeks if it wants to play in and win the national championship game. If other Power Five schools have their conference title game on Dec. 19, their champion would have to do the same.

So: What if a star player on any of the four playoff teams tests positive for COVID-19 right after the conference title game?

With a break of at least three weeks before the (Jan. 9) semifinals, this player could isolate for 14 days and still be able to play. With the Rose and Sugar Bowls still set for Jan. 1, this player could not play in the game.

The College Football Playoff is throwing caution to the wind, to a degree no one else is in college football.

Someone tell me how this makes any sense. I don’t think you can actually do it.

This is a desperate attempt to preserve New Year’s Day bowl traditions. After all the disruptions in the planning and scheduling of the 2020 regular season, this move is wildly out of touch with reality.