Oregon head football coach Dan Lanning is not quite old enough to tell anyone to get off his lawn, but he’s old enough to tell the NFL to get out of college football’s designated day.
The Ducks will make their first-ever appearance in the Orange Bowl on Thursday, when they take on the Texas Tech Red Raiders in the College Football Playoff (CFP). Should they win, they’ll face the winner of Alabama-Indiana on January 9.
Amid the complications of an extended playoff, a longer season, and an intense academic regimen, there has been much discussion about how to format the college football postseason properly. Lanning has his own thoughts on the matter, and they include the NFL butting out of Saturdays.
“We’ve got a ton of respect for the NFL. We are a prep league for the NFL… We do a lot of favors for the NFL,” Lanning said. “But there’s no money paid from the NFL to take care of college football. We’ve given up some of our days to the NFL.”
Lanning continued, “Saturday should be sacred for college football. Every Saturday through the month of December should belong to college football, in my opinion.”
The issue stems primarily from the gap between the end of the college football regular season and the start of the playoffs, and from the NFL moving its schedule up during that time, with several games scheduled for Saturdays.
Lanning’s solution, in part, is to move the start of the college football regular season up to avoid conflicting with the NFL. The Ducks’ head coach also made the case for scheduling a playoff game every seven days. A point that his opposing number, Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire, made himself a few weeks ago
“This is really not natural, you know, I really think we should be playing the playoffs every seven days,” McGuire said. “College football is not supposed to be played in the second semester. College football is not supposed to be played Jan. 19th…. If we want to get behind something and fix something, let’s fix the calendar before we fix anything else.”
To put the scheduling oddities in focus, Oregon last played on Dec. 20 vs. James Madison in the first round of the playoffs. However, before that, they were off for three weeks after concluding their regular season at Washington.
So, by the time the Ducks play Texas Tech on Thursday, they will have played only two games in a month.
That’s not exactly ideal for keeping a playoff team focused and out of trouble as they prepare for a championship run. A fact that will no doubt be discussed at the CFP meetings later this month.
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