College Football Season Explained: How Are NCAA Football Schedules Determined?

In any given season, a college football team could play as few as eight or as many as 12 games. The specific date, opponent, and location of each game makes each team's schedule unique. It's up to individual conferences to determine their conference schedule.

The NCAA doesn't control when teams play, but it does oversee the system that determines which teams will play each other. Every year, the NCAA publishes a list of approved schedules that schools can choose from. The approved schedule doesn’t set the dates, so a team might play at home against an opponent on September 15 and away on the same day.

Conferences decide the number of games each team plays. Some conferences play 8 games, others 10, some play a championship game, and others don't. The NCAA publishes the conference schedules early in the season.

The NCAA uses a selection committee to determine which teams will play in the College Football Playoff. A separate committee decides which team will take part in 35 different bowl games. The committee that decides the bowl participants is made up of several people.

The NCAA football schedule is released at the beginning of the season. The schedule changes as the game gets canceled or rescheduled.

The NCAA keeps track of the average temperatures in college football stadiums to make sure that no two games play at the same average temperature. If two football games are scheduled in the stadium on the the Same Day but at different times, the NCAA manually adjusts the temperature to ensure that teams are not disadvantaged.

Bye week is a special week during the college football season. It gives the team extra time to prepare for the next game. Every team has at least one game scheduled every day of the week. If all teams played on the same days, some teams would have two games set and others would only have one.

The NCAA football schedule is released at the beginning of every season. Three main factors go into creating a team’s schedule: potential non-conference opponents, possible home/away games, and the specific date of each game.