The Rose Bowl has no intention of leaving New Year’s Day for the expanded College Football Playoff.
The bowl game told The Athletic on Tuesday that it will ask the CFP to not be added to the playoff’s semifinal rotation and instead always host a quarterfinal. By always holding a quarterfinal matchup, the Rose Bowl can ensure that it stays on its traditional Jan. 1 date.
“Because we’re the only bowl that has the date as part of our brand in the New Year’s Six bowls, it’s really imperative for us and important for us,” Rose Bowl chair Laura Farber told ESPN. “We’re hopeful it will be sooner than later, but that depends on when the CFP has everything ready to go.”
Farber later clarified to The Athletic that the Rose Bowl had asked the CFP to stay on Jan. 1.
The Rose Bowl has fiercely protected its date and time on the college football calendar. When the four-team playoff was implemented ahead of the 2014 season, the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl hosted the first semifinal games in their traditional New Year’s Day slots. In the years that the Rose and Sugar didn’t host semifinals, the playoff games had to be held on other days as the two games didn’t give up their Jan. 1 dates.
The Rose Bowl’s stubbornness was even a playoff expansion hangup. It took until November of 2022 for the bowl game to reach an agreement with the playoff that expanded the postseason from four to 12 teams at the end of the upcoming season.
The playoff begins before Christmas this season as the first-round games are set for Dec. 20 and Dec. 21. Three quarterfinals — including the Rose and Sugar Bowls — are set for Jan. 1, with the other set for Dec. 31. The semifinals are set to be played on Jan. 9 and Jan. 10 and are being held by the Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl this season. The national title game, meanwhile, will be nine days later than it was a season ago. The 2025 title game is set for Jan. 20 in Atlanta.
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