Rose Bowl Game Faces Three Possible Kickoff Time Broadcast Windows on January 1

The Rose Bowl Game’s New Year’s Day kickoff time is unsettled again, and Pasadena will not know the answer until December.

On Monday, the College Football Playoff, ESPN and TNT Sports released the broadcast schedule for the 2026-27 season, and it leaves the 2027 Rose Bowl Game — a playoff quarterfinal set for Friday, Jan. 1, 2027 — without a fixed start time.

The game could kickoff as late as 5 p.m. Pacific time, a swing that would shape the rhythm of the city’s largest civic day and could push the Granddaddy of Them All past its traditional mid-afternoon slot.

More likely, the Game will fill the 1 p.m. opening.

Under this year’s schedule, three quarterfinals share New Year’s Day: windows at noon, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern — 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Pacific. The Rose Bowl, the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic are the three quarterfinal sites still awaiting window assignments, which the playoff will set on Selection Day, Sunday, Dec. 6, once the 12-team field is announced.

The noon and 4 p.m. games air on TNT and ABC and ESPN; the 8 p.m. game airs on ESPN.

The Rose Bowl is a quarterfinal, not a semifinal — a status the Pasadena Tournament of Roses has actively sought. The bowl has pushed to stay out of the semifinal rotation to protect its century-old New Year’s Day date, which management committee chair Laura Farber has called “imperative for us and important for us.”

The uncertainty is not new. For the game played Jan. 1, 2026, the playoff moved the Rose Bowl up an hour, to 1 p.m. Pacific from its traditional 2 p.m. start. At the time, Tournament of Roses CEO David Eads said the shift “will not impact the Rose Bowl Game experience” for participants or attendees. CFP executive director Rich Clark said the staggered starts let the playoff “place each game in an ideal window on New Year’s Day.”

For Pasadena, the window is more than a television detail. A 2 p.m. Pacific kickoff has long delivered the game’s signature image — sunset over the San Gabriel Mountains in the second half — and an earlier start moves the sun, while a 5 p.m. start would turn the Granddaddy into a night game ending well after dark.

The rest of the playoff calendar is fixed. The Fiesta Bowl quarterfinal kicks off Dec. 30; the semifinals follow at the Orange Bowl on Jan. 14 and the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 15; and the national championship is set for Jan. 25, 2027, in Las Vegas. Pasadena’s window, alone among the three, waits for Dec. 6.