The College Football Playoff semifinals are being staged this year on New Year’s Eve.

Yes, New Year’s Eve.

This is confusing to everyone because New Year’s Day is a great time for a couple big games and New Year’s Eve is a horrible one – at least if you are one of the many people who A) have to work, or B) have other plans that night. In other words, tens of millions of you.

So why is this happening? Why is college football staging its semifinals at a time that everyone predicts will cause fewer people to watch?

Here’s the honest answer: the people who run college football don’t care about you. At all. Like, not one single bit.

It may not make sense, but that’s the answer.

“We’re establishing a new tradition,” playoff executive director Bill Hancock said. “We're going to change the paradigm of New Year’s Eve.”

Except, no one is trying to establish a new tradition here. They are honoring two of the oldest traditions in America … self-indulgence and cronyism.

The conference commissioners who run the sport may not care about or even consider you, the fan, but they do care deeply about bowl executives, usually old friends who have been plying them with free everything – golf, gifts, booze, hotels, Caribbean cruises, you name it – for decades.

They really, really love those guys. Love them so much that when they designed the playoff they made sure, out of the goodness of their hearts, to continue outsourcing their most profitable games to them.

They love all bowl games but they love none quite like the Rose Bowl.

As such, they would never dare make the Rose Bowl move its kickoff time from 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 1 – you know, that perfect time to watch a big game. That’s when the start of the semifinal doubleheader should always be played. One out of every three years, when the Rose Bowl is a host, it is.

Yet in the other two years the Rose Bowl still gets the best time slot even if the game, such as this year, can only be considered “big” if you’re from Iowa. Meanwhile, the Sugar Bowl has somehow been granted exclusivity to the equally coveted primetime slot on New Year’s Day, even if it’s hosting Ole Miss-Oklahoma State and the five losses between them.

Oklahoma-Clemson and Michigan State-Alabama, the games that actually matter, get the less desirable times the day before.

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Again, this makes no sense. It’s the reality though. In college football the Rose Bowl gets to call the shots. It just does. In any other sport, or any other business, executives would either tell them to move or just crush them with counter programming.

Instead, college football decision-makers tell the fans to get lost while gleefully allowing the bowls to lead them around by the nose.

Conference commissioners are like that desperate guy in every Cialis commercial, blithely going for boring hikes through the foliage or freezing while holding hands in his and her tubs overlooking a valley ("You want me to take a bath in the damn woods?"). It’s all in the pitiful hope that their favorite bowl executive will give them that look that says the time is right.

View photos CFP director Bill Hancock doesn't seem to care about your New Year's Eve plans. (AP) More

Oh Rose Bowl, of course I’ll kick off a semifinal at 1 p.m. on a workday on the West Coast. And yes, I’ll absolutely not care about people, mostly younger, who have long-established plans or work that evening – in restaurants or transportation or staffed-up hospitals or wherever. I know you're not a school, a conference or in any way part of the NCAA, but let's go have a long, meaningful talk over a hot cup of tea.

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