Mike Elko downplays the NFL impacting when Texas A&M's College Football Playoff game starts

It’s less than a week before Mike Elko and the Texas A&M Aggies are set to host the Miami Hurricanes in a College Football Playoff game. There, they seemed to draw the short straw, with kickoff scheduled for 12:00 p.m. EST or 11:00 a.m. CST on Saturday, December 20th.

A big piece of why that kickoff is scheduled so early comes down to the NFL. With two NFL games scheduled for that same Saturday, including 5:00 p.m. EST and 8:20 p.m. EST kickoffs, it appears as though the Playoff didn’t want to put up too much inventory in direct competition. That’s how one game ended up on Friday night and Elko’s Aggies ended up with an early kickoff.

Elko isn’t worried about that, though. Instead, he’d downplay the impact of the early kick at the start of the week.

“Really, just put a ball down and play,” Mike Elko said. “We’re excited for the opportunity to go out in front of the 12th man. We’ve played 11 o’clock kicks before. The stadium atmosphere has been great. So, if that’s what time we’re playing, we’ll be ready to go.”

This season, Texas A&M has had three kicks before 12:00 p.m. CT. All three of those were wins, but only one of those games came against a P4 opponent, and that was the South Carolina game. In that game, Texas A&M notably needed to come back from being down 30-3 at halftime.

For Miami’s part, the Hurricanes have had three early kicks this season, all of which were in ACC play. They’d lose the early kick against SMU, which was played in Dallas, making for an earlier body clock game for Miami.

The College Football Playoff is going to have games scheduled for 12:00 p.m. EST, 3:30 p.m. EST, and 7:30 p.m. EST. That avoids putting any Playoff game up against itself. It also avoids putting multiple games directly against the NFL, as professional football makes its way to Saturdays moving forward this season.

The NFL doesn’t put games on Saturday before this point in the season because of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. In it, professional sports leagues are allowed to pool team broadcasting rights. However, it also doesn’t allow professional football to be telecast from 6:00 p.m. on Friday through the entirety of the day on Saturday. That exception runs from the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December, and the NFL jumps on the opportunity to place games on Saturdays once it can.

There is some debate regarding whether or not the exception could be extended beyond the second Saturday in December. For now, though, this is where it stands. So, Mike Elko and the Aggies will have to deal with the early kickoff time for now.