The championship game for the 2026 college football season is not slated to be played until Jan. 25, 2027. Everyone agrees that this is a problem, but no one has fixed it because of two issues:
1) The lack of courage, vision, foresight and overall chutzpah from the people currently occupying leadership positions within college football.
2) The Army-Navy game
Army-Navy moved to the second Saturday in December in 2009. It was a two birds/one stone move that gave one of college football's best rivalries a standalone spotlight on an afternoon that was otherwise free of FBS football. Times have changed. December is no longer a waiting game until a single championship game, and moving the championship game forward requires moving the entire playoff forward, which isn't possible so long as Army-Navy owns that afternoon. See Problem 1.
Since no one wants to come out and suggest moving Army-Navy and instantly be labeled a Troops Disrepecter, it would seen Army and Navy would have to volunteer to give up the second Saturday in December.
And in an interview with The Athletic, Army head coach Jeff Monken volunteered.
“I think Army-Navy is a huge part of the history of college football, and what it is today, even. Give us a four-hour block on Thanksgiving, or on Friday of Thanksgiving, or on Saturday of Thanksgiving, and give us a four-hour block, and just say nobody else plays during this four-hour block,” Monken said. “That’s still protecting the game.”
Moving Army-Navy to Thanksgiving weekend -- personally, I think the noon ET window on Black Friday makes the most sense -- would allow for the Barnett Plan to become reality. Moving the first round forward one week cuts two weeks off the end of the season.
Dec. 11-12: First round (campus sites)
Dec. 18-19: Quarterfinals (campus sites)
Jan. 1: Semifinals (Rose + rotating bowl sites)
Jan. 11: Championship game (neutral site)
Perfect? No. Better than what we've currently got? Absolutely.
Monken suggested the change partly due to charitable reasons, and partly due to selfish ones: as a member of the American Athletic Conference, Army very much wants to compete in the CFP itself, and playing Navy on the second Saturday in December is not conducive to thriving in the Playoff -- especially if/when it expands.
“It is possible for us to be in the playoffs,” Monken said. “But the problem becomes is if they expand the playoffs, or they move the playoffs to start at an earlier date, that would essentially force us to say, OK, do you play in the playoffs, or you play the Army-Navy game. Well, what kind of decision is that? We want to do both. So the only way we can do both is to move the Army-Navy game to Thanksgiving weekend.”
Many would argue that this is only a half-measure in and of itself -- that a 12, 16 or 24-team CFP should begin the first weekend of December and conclude on Jan. 1. This ignores that the conference title games are owned by the conferences, and thus lucrative for them. The Ohio State-Indiana Big Ten Championship of undefeated teams drew 18.3 million viewers (more than both CFP semifinals) and the rematch of Alabama-Georgia in the SEC title game drew 16.9 million. Those leagues aren't giving up their title games without a fight. Also, the last FBS season to end on Jan. 1 proper was 1993. The FCS and Division III title games are now after Jan. 1 themselves. The networks -- i.e., the folks paying the bills in college sports -- generally want more football on television around the holidays, not less.
The FBS championship game will never be held on New Year's Day again, but it doesn't need to be on Jan. 25th, either. Hopefully, Monken's comments moved us one step closer to sanity.