The 2020 Capital One Orange Bowl is now the 2019 Capital One Orange Bowl. Welcome to the byzantine world of the college football postseason.
The Orange Bowl, College Football Playoff and ESPN announced Monday the Capital One Orange Bowl to be played after the 2019 regular season (put that on a bowl pin) has been moved from Wednesday, Jan. 1 to Monday, Dec. 30.
Rather than make the Orange Bowl the lead-in to the Rose Bowl, the powers that be decided it’d be better to keep it a night game, instead making it a de facto Monday Night Football game. (There is no MNF game in Week 17 of the NFL season.) The Orange Bowl was the first to be played at night, beginning on Jan. 1, 1965, and has been played, at least partially, under the Miami night every year since then.
“The Capital One Orange Bowl was presented with a unique opportunity by our partners, including ESPN, Capital One, the ACC, Big Ten, SEC, Notre Dame, the Miami Dolphins and the CFP, to play this year’s game on Monday, December 30 in primetime,” Orange Bowl Committee president José C. Romano said in a statement. “With other bowl games planned for the early afternoon window on January 1, this move enables our game to stand alone as the only bowl game staged on Monday night, when fans are used to viewing football games. We are confident this traditional start time will be a positive for both the out of town and local fans who attend our game, as well as the television viewers across the country.”
It is not immediately known what game will take the 1 p.m. ET slot on ESPN on Jan. 1. In the 2018 campaign, the Fiesta Bowl was the lead-in to the Rose Bowl, while the Peach Bowl served as pre-game fodder for the first of the two CFP semifinals, the Cotton Bowl. The Citrus and Outback bowls are annual New Year’s games in addition to the Rose and Sugar; the Citrus aired on ABC opposite the Fiesta in the 1 p.m. ET time slot, while the Outback kicked at noon ET on ESPN2. Because of that, the guess here is the Citrus Bowl will now kick at 1 p.m. ET on New Year’s Day, taking the slot the Orange just vacated.
The 2019-20 New Year’s Six schedule will now break down as follows:
Saturday, Dec. 28
Cotton Bowl (early afternoon)
Peach/Fiesta Bowl (CFP semifinal)
Peach/Fiesta Bowl (CFP semifinal)
Monday, Dec. 30
Orange Bowl (primetime)
Wednesday, Jan. 1
Bowl TBA (early afternoon)
Rose Bowl (mid-afternoon)
Sugar Bowl (primetime)
So, while already accepting the inherent awkwardness of the New Year’s Six games now spread across three days — with the two most important games going second and third in the rotation — consider this your reminder that the national championship game won’t be played until Monday, Jan. 13, more than two weeks after the semifinal games.
