The college football season could start a week earlier as soon as 2027, with a key NCAA committee moving toward making a recommendation in the next couple of months.

Sources told The Athletic that administrators and coaches on the committee strongly support moving the start of the season for all teams to the late-August weekend that is now typically called Week 0, as a way to ensure teams have at least two idle weeks within a 12-game slate.

The move still has to be approved by the NCAA football oversight committee, which next meets April 16, and the sources cautioned the Week 0 move may not be fully addressed until May or June. But there is also urgency to pass the change so teams can start making their schedules for 2027 and beyond. Most teams have their nonconference schedules set, but announcing the move now would allow them to move games around, or let conferences decide to schedule games the new opening week.

Multiple people involved in the discussions spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity in order to be candid about an ongoing process.

Starting the season earlier is part of a wider discussion around the college football calendar, but it is not directly tied to potentially moving up the start of the College Football Playoff. The regular season would still end on Thanksgiving weekend, when a full slate of games, especially rivalries, gives television networks plenty of inventory.

Instead, making Week 0 the new potential start of everyone’s season is about ensuring teams more rest now that every power conference is playing a nine-game schedule and the Playoff extends into late January. The SEC and ACC’s addition of a ninth conference game this season also means there should be enough good games to spread around the calendar, even with an additional open week for every team.

The rule change also may not push every season to start in what is now Week 0. It would depend on the yearly calendar: The proposal would essentially take Thanksgiving, count 14 weeks back (including Thanksgiving) and start the season during that 14th week. So there would be some years when the season would still start on Labor Day weekend.

But in three of the next five years — including this year — there are only 13 weeks from Labor Day to Thanksgiving. The rule would make it so in those years, the season would start the week before Labor Day.

There are eight Week 0 games involving Football Bowl Subdivision teams this season, including North Carolina-TCU in Dublin, Ireland, and NC State-Virginia in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Teams have been selectively playing on Week 0 for some time, but they required a waiver from the NCAA to do so.

This proposal would remove the need for the waivers, and anything that eliminates waivers is generally seen as a positive among the NCAA and administrators. A similar scheduling change has already been approved at the Football Championship Subdivision level, which is adopting the 12-game season and can begin playing on Week 0 without a waiver starting this year.

FBS administrators and coaches are engaged in a wide-ranging discussion over the football calendar. Moving the season to Week 0 was seen as low-hanging fruit because it has widespread support and does not have to wait for the future format of the CFP to be decided.

But the start of the season is connected to the offseason, which would be the next step for the oversight committee.

Administrators and coaches on the committee want to discuss switching from spring practice to NFL-style offseason workouts, commonly called OTAs (organized team activities), which are staggered during the spring and summer and would give college teams more flexibility.

Right now, the NCAA allows teams 12 spring practices and three scrimmages, with the third scrimmage usually serving as the spring game. But as more teams have phased out the spring game, and as college football has become a year-round sport, the question has become whether OTAs should replace a more regimented spring practice format.