This Saturday will be unprecedented – and in some ways not everyone will be happy with it.

For the first time in what feels like forever, the NFL and major college football are in deliberate and direct conflict with each other. The first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff begins at noon ET with SMU hosting Penn State. The Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans square off at Arrowhead at 1 p.m. It starts at Clemson in Texas at 4 p.m. Half an hour later it’s Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens, next up is Ohio State-Tennessee as a nightcap in its own right.

First thought: That’s a lot of football, that’s great.

Second thought: They could have done a much better job than they did planning it.

Due to the length of some college games, the end of the two early games could certainly collide. The chances of this happening are even greater in the late afternoon window. That means everyone planned these things without any consideration for anyone else involved – and that’s incredibly short-sighted of everyone behind it.

To be clear, this is not the NFL’s hostile capture of the flag that the NBA planted on Christmas Day decades ago. Professional football and professional basketball are competitors for the sports consumer dollar. Everything is fine in business. They have competing interests. They compete. It’s all ok.

Complete expert predictions for the College Football Playoff round

Conversely, the NFL’s relationship with college football, a sport that has advanced to the point where it has become America’s second most popular sport after its big brother, football, is something to be valued, not abused. The same goes the other way – the success of the NFL is good for college football. The professional league gets a free minor league, year-round advertising for its second-biggest event (the draft), and ready-made stars who have been on national television for years. The college ranks continue the success that the NFL has experienced.

They should help each other almost every step of the way.

In this case, there was actually an attempt to do just that.

Before plans for the College Football Playoff were formalized last year, NFL officials had a series of secret meetings with CFP officials and conference commissioners. From what I understand, the NFL took the lead in these meetings – but only to suggest ways that college football could accommodate its desires.

The NFL’s stance on this is simple. Part of the league’s antitrust exemption prohibits it from playing games on Saturdays from the second Saturday in September to the second Saturday in December. As a result, the NFL routinely scheduled games for the third Saturday in December. In 2000, not counting this year, the NFL hosted games on this weekend in 20 of 24 seasons, including the last 10 years in a row.

Not wanting to give up that spot, the NFL proposed that college football play midweek doubleheaders on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of that week. The college football people responded that they would not jump into what many believed was a television ratings black hole. So the two sides left the table without any real agreement and decided to go about their business as if the other side didn’t exist – with one exception.

The NFL has vacated the Saturday prime-time slot it had filled for the last 10 years and 20 of the last 22 years. The college football people I talked to appreciated that. However, after it was rumored that the NFL would delay its kickoff times, setting them at, say, 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. ET, the league positioned itself right near the windows where the earlier CFP games would take place and made sure such a headache. Head-to-head competition.

Meanwhile, ESPN won the bid for the CFP rights, something the company didn’t fully expect. At the time, the world market leader assumed that the rights would probably be divided, which is why those responsible did not expect to secure the entire range of games. With the rights came the option to sublicense games. And when Turner, in the process of losing its NBA rights, showed a desire to get into the CFP fray, it found a willing seller in ESPN and a deal was struck to split the four first-round games.

ESPN gave TNT the two head-to-head games with the NFL and then secured the two biggest national brands of the first-round teams – Ohio State and Notre Dame – for the prime-time slots on Friday and Saturday. That’s a good indication of the impact ESPN believes the NFL will have on CFP ratings.

It’s also an indication that this isn’t right for the football fan who wants to catch all the action but will be forced to surf the channels on Saturday.

I spoke to outgoing CFP executive director Bill Hancock about all of this on Wednesday night, and he agreed that it would be best from now on if everyone at the two levels of the sport worked together. The fans. The NFL. And college football too.

“The 12-team playoffs will be really good for college football,” Hancock said. “And Saturday will be one of the most exciting days in college football history.”

Of course he is right.

But at the same time, Patrick Mahomes, TJ Watt, Lamar Jackson and CJ Stroud will keep some fans from seeing it in furtherance of the league’s desire to push (and sell) the new Christmas broadcast window since Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year – because they have to make this decision.

So how does this get resolved?

One solution that was floated in meetings between the teams was the idea that college football could delay the start of its season by a week to the weekend before Labor Day. So the problem is that teams are playing in the Southern heat in August and moving rivalry weekend, a ratings bonanza for college football, outside of Thanksgiving weekend, with the conference title games taking that spot.

Another reason was the idea that college football could simply play the games on Army-Navy weekend. The problem, of course, would be what would happen if one of the military academies made the CFP – a proposal that was actually in play in the Army this year. Then there’s the idea of ​​moving Army-Navy from its standalone weekend, which would probably be a non-starter for a lot of people.

In any case, it will take some creativity since college football is so protective of its traditions and the NFL is just as aggressive in creating and monetizing broadcast windows.

As good as college football may be for the league in the long run, an NFC team president wrote to owners: “It is far more important to create more television windows that the networks will pay for than to generate draft interest. “

Ultimately, both sides are chasing money.

It would obviously help everyone if they would put that aside for a minute or two and try to figure out exactly what is best for all of us who are busy with everything on Saturday. In the long run, it might actually be best for everyone, including business.

Anyway, I can’t wait for Saturday. Even though I know this clearly, it could be even better.