Florida Gators head coach Jon Sumrall knows what it’s like to lead a team to the College Football Playoff. Moving forward, winning a national championship by navigating the College Football Playoff will be significantly harder.

Sumrall didn’t pull any punches talking about how absurd the schedule is becoming.

“I would love for us to move the season up a week or two, like week zero,” said Sumrall. “I think it’s asinine. I get it, it’s all for TV and all that money, but the college football championship game next year is January 24th, that’s absurd to me. That means the midpoint of the football season, if you play in the games, like late, mid to late November.”

Jon Sumrall criticizes College Football Playoff schedule

Having the National Championship Game on the 25th of January in 2027 and the 24th in 2028 is crazy to think about. During the BCS era, before they had a standalone game, it was usually on Jan. 4, before the spring semester started.

“There’s some parts to this that, like, we moved up the high school signing date to early December,” Sumrall said. “Well, we did that to protect the high school kids from losing their spots to transfers. But then right after we did that, then what we do? We move the transfer portal window back. So it’s like, well, then why? We move the high school signing day from the middle of December to the beginning of December? So it’s like, we fix the problem, and we change the other part of it. And it’s like, it just seems a little bit scattered.

“I do think, you know, there’s still this thing called school, right? These guys have to go to class or, allegedly, and so the academic calendar and the football season are really not matched as they used to, which, I think, for us archaic football coaches, and how it’s kind of a little bit messy and a little unclean, but I think move the season up. I think start like start the playoffs earlier in the playoffs, earlier. Make it match a little bit closer to the old January 1 national championship game. Maybe not the first. Maybe it’s the fourth or whatever. But I think that would be awesome.”

SEC coaches aren’t thrilled with the things

Another element of the schedule for this upcoming season is how things have changed for the SEC. The Gators and the other 15 SEC teams will play an extra conference game and have one of their three non-conference games against a Power Five opponent. It’s not a huge deal for the Gators, as they play the Florida State Seminoles each season.

Needless to say, the coaches in the conference aren’t too happy about the schedule, especially the lack of an expanded playoff.

“I would say this, like having been in the SEC head coaches text. The one thing I think that the SEC head coaches feel like, as a whole, and probably unanimous on this, is that when I wasn’t in this room, when the nine-game conference schedule got talked about, I was not coaching this league at that time,” Sumrall said.

“I think they all felt like, ‘Hey, we’re going to nine, and we’re going to expand the playoff to 16.’ And I think a lot of those guys feel I wasn’t in there. So I don’t necessarily have this feeling, but I see why they have this feeling. Feel like they got burned, because it’s like, alright, now we’re playing nine conference games, a 10th that power four game, and we’re not expanding the playoff. We play in arguably the toughest league, game in, game out. I’m not saying other leagues don’t have great teams, but I would say there are a lot of things around the calendar playoff model that need to be evaluated still.”

This won’t go away, as the size of the College Football Playoff has been contentious since it was implemented ahead of the 2014 season. More expansion feels like a certainty, and with comments as strong as these from Sumrall, it’s only a matter of time.

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