This year, College Football Playoff games for the first time will go head-to-head with the NFL. 

The CFP has announced its broadcast schedule for the expanded, 12-team postseason, setting up a Saturday clash in late December that will feature five major, overlapping football telecasts. With three first-round CFP games and two NFL Week 16 matchups, here’s the slate for Dec. 21 (all Eastern Time):

• Noon: CFP Round 1, TNT Sports
• 1 p.m.: Texans-Chiefs, NBC
• 4 p.m.: CFP Round 1, TNT Sports
• 4:30 p.m.: Steelers-Ravens, Fox
• 8 p.m.: CFP Round 1, ABC/ESPN

A New Approach

Until this season, CFP semifinal and championship games had fallen on days without NFL games. But the expansion to 12 teams, and the addition of a quarterfinals and first round, made it impossible not to overlap with the NFL, which is seemingly on a mission to overtake as many game broadcast windows as it can. 

Previously, the NFL was said to have been trying to convince the CFP committee to move one of its three Saturday games to Friday, Dec. 20, according to Puck. Clearly, whatever efforts the NFL made weren’t enough. In 2025, the CFP has the same first-round schedule planned: one game Friday night, Dec. 19, and three games Saturday, Dec. 20, which is also the NFL schedule’s Week 16—a spot the league will no doubt continue to want to play games on Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

By the Numbers

Last year, the NFL’s Week 16 slate included a late-afternoon and prime-time matchup that were the most-watched sports telecasts of the day. The Steelers-Bengals game at 4:30 p.m. ET drew 14.29 million viewers on NBC, before the Bill-Chargers at 8 p.m. ET attracted a streaming audience of 7.33 million on Peacock. There are no CFP games to compare that against, but Utah-Northwestern in the Las Vegas Bowl did draw 3.09 million viewers on ABC that same Saturday night.

It should be noted that the two NFL games will be on broadcast TV, while the first two CFP games will be on cable. After Round 1, the CFP will have exclusive game windows on ESPN in the quarterfinals, semifinals, and final that won’t face viewer competition from the NFL.

The Browns have one of the NFL’s more tortured on-field histories. But when it comes to developing a new or upgraded stadium, the team can boast multiple options that are rapidly growing more serious. 

Just one of four teams to never play in a Super Bowl (Jaguars, Lions, and Texans are the others), the Browns for months have made clear their desire to upgrade their stadium situation beyond the lakefront Cleveland Browns Stadium that is nearly 25 years old. That consideration has involved two main choices: renovating the current facility as part of a broader downtown revamp, or building a new stadium in suburban Brook Park, Ohio, where Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have an option to purchase 176 acres of land near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. 

Now, both of those potential outcomes are gaining additional weight. The Brook Park City Council recently passed unanimously a resolution “encouraging the Haslam Sports Group to strongly consider” the parcel—formerly the site of two Ford Motor Company plants—as the location for a new domed stadium and entertainment district. Brook Park mayor Edward Orcutt then signed the resolution. 

The city of Cleveland, meanwhile, is pushing forward, too. Officials there have applied for a $260 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to help pay for a $440 million renovation of downtown. The pursuit of federal funds is independent of what the Browns decide to do. But it nonetheless enhances the broader potential of the area, particularly as the city’s redevelopment plan seeks to better connect the lakefront near the current stadium and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of downtown Cleveland. 

The option of a renovated Cleveland Browns Stadium is estimated at about $1 billion, while building in Brook Park would cost $2.4 billion. The Browns have steadily insisted they are not playing the two jurisdictions off each other in search of a better deal, and, as of now, a 50-50 split between private and public funding in either situation has been contemplated. But it’s becoming more likely the team will have solid possibilities in either scenario, and the Brook Park consideration has even included a release of early-stage stadium renderings.

Bigger Aspirations

Similar to the Bears’ stadium pursuit in Chicago, and developing efforts for a new Chiefs stadium, building a domed stadium would open up Cleveland to bid for hosting large-scale indoor events (Super Bowl, Final Four, and College Football Playoff, for example) that it currently cannot. 

The Browns’ stadium lease expires in 2028.

There is an extra layer to the emerging battle between Cleveland and Brook Park for the Browns. The city said Wednesday it will start deposing Brook Park residents in a seven-year-old lawsuit between the two jurisdictions stemming from a failed expansion of the airport. That dispute does not involve the Browns, but the political battling there is difficult to separate from the rising stadium issue.