At long last, college football is back this weekend. For that, we should all be grateful.
No offense to the sport of baseball, which I love, but the months-long period of baseball carrying the heavy load of the sports calendar is coming to an end. We finally get a full slate of college football this Saturday to whet our palates after months of wandering in the desert that is the interminable offseason.
Wait, I’m being told there are only five games this weekend? Only one of them has any ranked teams playing?
Don’t get me wrong, Farmageddon (No. 17 Kansas State vs. No. 22 Iowa State) is a great way to kick off the 2025 season in Dublin on Saturday afternoon. And I’ll be glued to my television this weekend for games I’m not sure would normally have anything close to my full attention.
I’ll be spitting out hot takes from my couch about how Stanford performs in its season opener at Hawaii after I get far too invested in Fresno State’s upset bid at Kansas.
But in this new era of college football, is there a real reason behind the decision to restrict which teams can play in Week 0? Or are we now in a world where we should do away with the amuse-bouche that is the current Week 0 and just proclaim this weekend to be Week 1?
The reason for Week 0 games currently is to give teams an extra bye week if they are making extended trips. To play a Week 0 game, teams must either be playing an international game, playing in Hawaii this season, or playing against a team that will be in Hawaii this season.
Otherwise, the only other exception is a scheduling conflict. UNLV’s scheduled home game vs. Idaho State was moved from Sept. 13 to Aug. 23 because Allegiant Stadium was double-booked that night for the Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford boxing match.
From a scheduling standpoint, you could do a few things by opening up Week 0 to everyone. If you wanted to keep the national title game where it is on the third Monday of January, you could give every team an extra bye week during the season, something no coach would complain about.
However, if you were to move the entire regular season up a week and eliminate conference championship week — a controversial topic but one that has become a growing conversation piece in the 12-team (and probably soon larger) playoff era — that would give you the two weeks you need to play the national title game where it belongs.
On a Saturday. Not forced to Monday night until close to midnight on the East Coast simply to avoid competing with the NFL playoffs.
The sport that owns fall Saturdays should finish on that same day. This is the way to make that happen.
The side benefit of starting each season out with a deluge of college football instead of a trickle would just be an extra bonus.