Rose bowl

Thotz:

1. It's still called the Football Bowl Subdivision. The purpose of the playoff is to get fans to quit carping about the disaster that was the BCS "championship" game. Largely they succeeded with the four-team playoff.

2. The SEC has always wanted a similar status for their bowl game to the Rose Bowl. As a reminder "ESPN will pay $80 million a year to televise the Sugar Bowl, sources said. That's the same amount ESPN will pay annually for the Rose Bowl." ( http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8601209/sugar-bowl-new-orleans-site-marquee-big-12-sec-game )

3. I suspect that part of the reason for insisting these games occur on New Year's Day (or Jan 2 if NYD is a Sunday) is to continue the tradition of the Tournament of Roses parade which is still a pretty important event in Pasadena. It highlights the mild weather in Southern California.

4. After the playoffs did poorly on New Year's Eve with respect to viewership, that becomes a strong argument to avoid further expansion. I predict there will not be CFP expansion in the foreseeable future.

5. I expect there will be a push to extend the NY holiday to include NYE. Banks by federal law cannot be closed for days in a row, so it will NOT be a federal holiday. But it might become common practice kind of like SB watching parties. This is the iffiest of my comments.