College Football Schedule

Given the constantly-changing structure of the college football season, it can be difficult to establish a pattern that will be accurate for any given year. However, in general, college football has four relatively well-defined distinct time periods: the regular season, the conference championships, the postseason bowl games, and the final all-star games.

• Labor Day Weekend (the three-day weekend ending with the first Monday in September) is the official start of the college football season.

• Regular season — Labor Day to the 2nd Saturday in December (the new, later date of the annual Army-Navy Game). The first two weeks of December see a number of rivalry games and conference championships.

• Historically, there were eleven regular season games; this has been expanded to include a twelfth game as well as an additional game for Hawaiian and Alaskan colleges.

• Not all conferences participate in a championship game; at this time, only Conference USA (C-USA), as well as the Atlantic Coast,  Big 12, Mid-American, and Southeast Conferences offer championship games — which adds at least one extra game for the teams involved.

• December (postseason) –  34 Bowl games featuring the top 64 college teams. Since 1998, the  Bowl Championship Series has been used to determine the best college teams, but is as yet unrecognized by the NCAA (as are the annual championship polls).

• Early January — BCS National Championship (usually January 1st or 2nd, if the 1st falls on a Sunday, but has been played as late as January 8th). As we’ve said, this is not an official part of the NCAA college season, but has been widely recognized to be at least as meaningful as the championship polls which it was intended to replace.

• All-star Bowls — later in January, featuring the best college seniors. Only players who are not eligible for further college may play — underclassmen departing for professional football careers are officially excluded.