Making Week 0 Standard Is the Only Way to Fix the Grind

There is a specific smell to a locker room in late August. It’s a mix of wet pads, floor cleaner, and that heavy, humid air that hangs over the South like a wet wool blanket. By the time you get to the third week of camp, the legs are heavy. The adrenaline of day one has worn off, and the bruises from the first scrimmage have turned that ugly shade of yellow-green.

Every coach knows this wall. You hit it right before the lights turn on for the opener.

Right now, the people running college football are finally realizing they’ve built a calendar that ignores that physical wall. According to recent reports from The Athletic, there is “a lot of traction” behind the idea of making Week 0 the new standard opening week for everyone.

This isn't just administrative shuffling. It’s a necessary mercy for a sport that is running its engine too hot.

The Math Doesn't Lie

The College Football Playoff has pushed the finish line to late January. We are looking at championship games on January 25, 2027, and January 24, 2028. That is a professional schedule played by student-athletes who still have to pretend to go to class.

Under the current setup, teams are grinding through 12 regular-season games, conference championships, and a four-round playoff. That is 16 or 17 games if you go the distance. You cannot ask a 20-year-old linebacker to play that many snaps with only one bye week and expect his shoulders to hold up.

Making Week 0 the universal start date solves the math problem. It opens up the calendar to give every team two bye weeks.

In coaching terms, a bye week isn't a vacation. It’s maintenance. It’s the difference between a high ankle sprain healing and a high ankle sprain becoming a season-ending tear. It’s a mental reset for a quarterback who has been getting hit by 300-pounders for six weeks straight.

The Heat Argument Doesn't Hold Water

The main pushback against starting earlier is the August heat. It’s a valid concern, but it’s one we solved a long time ago at the high school level.

Go to any town in Alabama, Georgia, or Texas on a Friday night in late August. You’ll see high school kids playing four quarters. If a 16-year-old in Dothan can handle a kickoff when it's 88 degrees at 7 p.m., a Power 4 roster with a multi-million dollar nutrition staff and cooled sideline misting fans can handle it, too.

Georgia Athletic Director Josh Brooks, who co-chairs the NCAA committee on the calendar, noted that high schools have been opening in August for years. The infrastructure is there. The protocols are there. The fear of the thermometer shouldn't hold back a change that protects the players for the long haul.

Rhythm vs. Rust

There is also the issue of competitive balance. Oregon head coach Dan Lanning pointed out a critical flaw in the current playoff structure: the bye weeks are actually hurting teams.

Lanning noted that Oregon was in a better rhythm playing a first-round game than they were sitting at home. "Playoff games should be played in sequential order and really quickly," he said.

He’s right. Football is a game of repetition. When you sit a team down for three or four weeks between a conference title game and a quarterfinal, you aren't resting them; you're rusting them. Spreading the season out with an earlier start allows for better pacing throughout the fall, rather than the stop-start jerkiness we see in December and January.

The Bottom Line

Moving the season up to late August gives the sport two weekends before the NFL takes over the airwaves. That’s good for the networks. But from where I sit, the TV money is secondary to the logistics.

We have stretched the season to its absolute limit. If we are going to ask these players to play a 17-game slate, we owe them the time to recover between the collisions.

Start the season in August. Let them sweat a little earlier so they can survive until January.