Mistakes were made in the scheduling of the New Year's Six

Who made the mistakes though? Actually, it's not that actual mistakes were made by any one party, but that some unfortunate coincidences led to our having the playoff semifinals on New Year's Eve the majority of the time. This is nothing new, although many are just finding out about it, but the semifinals will only be on New Year's Day when they're the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl, which is once every three years. In the other two years of the rotation (Orange/Cotton and Fiesta/Peach) they'll be on New Year's Eve because the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are locked in at 5 and 8:30 ET on New Year's Day. I described and explained all this on my very first post on this blog, ever, way back here: http://thewhole9yds.blogspot.com/2014/01/thoughts-on-and-questions-about-college.html

Here is the full rotation (repeats in the same manner every three years):

Note that the Cotton and Fiesta Bowls will flop back and forth between New Year's Eve and New Year's Day based on whether or not they are semifinals that year. The other four bowls are locked in to their day, with the exception that the "New Year's Day" becomes Monday, January 2, when New Year's Day falls on a Sunday. Beyond simply avoiding a conflict with the NFL's Week 17, it has been always the case that the Rose Bowl is on Monday, January 2, simply because the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade doesn't ever take place on a Sunday.

The timings of the games are (ET):
December 31
12:30 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl (unless it's a semifinal, then Orange Bowl in this timeslot)
4 Vizio Fiesta Bowl (if Cotton or Peach Bowl is semifinal, it's in this timeslot)
8 Capital One Orange Bowl (if Fiesta Bowl is semifinal, it's in this timeslot)

January 1 (or Monday, January 2, if 1/1 is Sunday)
12:30 Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic (unless it's a semifinal, then Fiesta Bowl in this timeslot)
5 Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual
8:30 Allstate Sugar Bowl

(A quick aside: I saw many complaints on Twitter last year when the Rose Bowl ran long and delayed the Sugar Bowl to 9 ET. The complaints stated that the West Coast game should have been played second. Two things:
#1: The Sugar Bowl is played in the Central Time Zone. It was delayed from 7:30 to 8 local time. Nothing wrong with that.
#2: The Rose Bowl Game has been played at 5 ET/2 PT for decades, before the CFP, before the BCS, and before even the organization and structuring of college football on a nationwide scale! It's a tradition to have it immediately following the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade, and that's not going to change)

The College Football Playoff National Championship Game will be played the first Monday that's at least a week after the semifinals. This could be as early as January 7, if the semifinals were on New Year's Eve on a Monday, or as late as January 14, if the semifinals were on New Year's Day on a Tuesday.

You'll notice above that besides the Rose and Sugar Bowl, the other four move around quite a lot based on what's a semifinal and what's not. It's understandable that the Rose Bowl, with all its tradition, especially because it's attached to a non-football event in the parade, would get locked into a specific timeslot. What about the Sugar Bowl though? And that's where the unfortunate coincidence lies, the one I mentioned in the opening paragraph.

You see, for years the SEC and Big 12 wanted to make their own tradition with the Sugar Bowl, similar to the Pac-12 and Big 10's with the Rose Bowl, with a locked-in timeslot and everything. They went ahead and signed the contract with the Sugar Bowl Committee, but they had to wait until the BCS contract expired for theirs to kick in. The unfortunate coincidence is that the CFP committee also signed contracts with the New Year's Six Bowls and also had to wait until the BCS era ended for the contracts that awarded the rotating semifinals to kick in. Unfortunately, even before the CFP signed these contracts, and likely before they had even decided how the New Year's Six system with the rotating semifinals would work, the Big 12 and SEC had already finalized their contract with the Sugar Bowl Committee to lock in that game at 8:30 ET New Year's Day. The CFP then had to work its scheduling around the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl BOTH being locked in to specific timeslots, which led to our current situation of New Year's Eve semifinals two out of every three years.

The unfortunate coincidence was that both the SEC/Big 12 coalition and the College Football Playoff committee were waiting for the BCS era to end for their different objectives, but that the objectives collided when the time finally came.