If there’s one theme that defines college football’s 2025 season, it’s the growing chorus of complaints about the sport’s broken calendar. Coaches have been griping all year about the transfer portal overlapping with the playoffs, about three-week gaps between games, and about a postseason that drags into late January. But now, as the confetti has settled, the complaints are getting louder. 

Brett McMurphy of On3 posted the next four venues and dates for the CFP title game on social media: Las Vegas on January 25, 2027; New Orleans on January 24, 2028; Tampa on January 22, 2029; and Miami on January 21, 2030. Each game is scheduled later than the one before it.

$11.6 million Rhett Lashlee, whose Mustangs finished 8-4 this season, didn’t hold back in his response. “Something has to be done. College football has to end sooner,” Lashlee wrote. “We don’t need 2-3 weeks between the end of the season and the playoffs starting. Jan 1 end is ideal. Max one week later. Push the season up. Get the games played. We continue to do things that don’t make any sense.”

Rhett Lashlee isn’t some lone voice shouting into the void. He’s echoing frustrations that coaches across the sport have been expressing for months. Oregon’s Dan Lanning has been particularly vocal about the playoff structure. He pointed out that no other major sport stretches out its postseason with such absurdly long breaks. “Whether it’s the NFL, whether it’s FCS football, whether it’s Division II football, March Madness, there are not those long breaks in between games,” Lanning said before the Rose Bowl. “That’s somewhere we messed up.”

Lanning advocated for every playoff game to be played on consecutive weekends, even if that meant starting the season in Week 0 or eliminating a bye week, with the national championship on January 1. He reasoned that two rounds of NFL playoff games take place between the CFP semifinals and the late-January title game. It makes it nearly impossible for college football to maintain momentum.​

The calendar chaos extends beyond just game dates. It’s the intersection of the transfer portal, early signing day, and the playoff that’s driving coaches crazy. The portal opened on January 2 this year. It meant players on playoff teams had to decide whether to enter while their teammates were preparing for the biggest games of their lives. 

Rhett Lashlee experienced this firsthand in 2024 when SMU made its first College Football Playoff appearance. He saw rival programs actively recruit his players off the roster. “No other sport allows free agency during the season,” Rhett Lashlee said at the time. “It’s disheartening and unacceptable.” Whether this system changes or not remains to be seen, but the growing chatter will definitely demand action.

A calendar crisis of their own making

At the American Football Coaches Association convention held last week, over 50 coaches told The Athletic that the current system is detrimental to everyone involved, with many preferring almost any alternative to the status quo.​But interestingly, coaches voted for much of this mess themselves.

They wanted national signing day in early December. They wanted a single two-week transfer portal window in January rather than multiple windows throughout the year. Illinois coach Bret Bielema, a vocal member of the AFCA board of trustees, acknowledged the frustration while pushing for a complete overhaul.

 “It’s maddening that people can’t let go of the past to embrace the future,” Bielema said. “That’s probably the most disappointing part. They always keep trying to fit today’s world into last year’s calendar. It just doesn’t work. At some point, there’s got to be this total reset”. AFCA executive director Craig Bohl admitted the calendar issues won’t be “vetted and solved in one short meeting.”

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However, he believes there’s real momentum from stakeholders to address the biggest friction points as soon as this offseason. The biggest challenge might be overcoming inertia in a sport that’s notoriously resistant to rapid change. Unless, of course, the courts get involved.