The College Football Playoff officially set the schedule for the first 12-team tournament on Wednesday, finalizing an event that has been years -- centuries, really -- in the making.
The major news announced Wednesday was that the 2024-25 CFP will officially begin Friday, Dec. 20, with a first-round matchup at a to-be-determined location, played at 8 p.m. ET and simulcast on ABC and ESPN. Now in the 11th year of the system, this will be the first CFP game aired on ABC, despite Disney owning exclusive rights to the Playoff throughout its existence. ESPN and the CFP inked a 6-year, $7.8 billion extension that will keep the Playoff on ESPN through 2031-32. ABC will begin showing the national title game in the 2026 season.
The fourth and final first-round game will air Saturday, Dec. 21, also at 8 p.m. ET, also simulcast on ABC and ESPN.
All quarterfinal and semifinal games, as well as the CFP National Championship, will air exclusively on ESPN and its family of networks -- but not ABC, which Disney owns, and which reaches more homes than ESPN.
The second and third first-round games will air on TNT. This is the first of a multi-year agreement between ESPN and Turner for TNT to sublicense a set of CFP games each year; the CFP announced on May 22 that TNT will air two first-round games in 2024 and '25, and add two quarterfinal games from 2026-28.
The first-round games will likely be held on campus sites, but could be moved to neutral locations depending on who is selected to host. That will not be determined until Sunday, Dec. 8, so some lucky(?) athletics department will have 12 days to prepare to host the first CFP first-round games, while three others will have the luxury of 13 days.
In another first, those games will compete head-to-head with NFL games airing on major broadcast networks for the first time (meaning: not NFL Network or Amazon Prime). NBC will show the Houston Texans at the Kansas City Chiefs at 1 p.m. ET, and Fox will air Pittsburgh at Baltimore at 4:30 p.m ET.
Sites for quarterfinal games and beyond were previously announced, with times now set:
The Fiesta Bowl will kickoff off the quarterfinal round at 7:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Dec. 31 (also known as New Year's Eve). New Year's Day brings a triple-header: the Peach Bowl at 1 p.m. ET, the Rose Bowl in its traditional 5 p.m. ET slot, followed by the Sugar Bowl at 8:30.
The semifinals will be held Thursday, Jan. 9 at the Orange Bowl and Friday, Jan. 10 at the Cotton Bowl. Both games begin at 7:30 p.m. ET and air on ESPN. The national championship will be Monday, Jan. 20 at Atlanta, also kicking at 7:30 p.m. ET and airing exclusively on ESPN.