Blog

How to Make a Family Football Calendar for Multiple Teams (NFL + College)

NFL & College October 26, 2026 By Andrew

In a lot of households, football loyalties are split. One person grew up with an NFL team from another state, someone else went to a college in a different conference, and a kid has picked a team because of one player. Put that together and you get a fall weekend with games on Thursday, Friday night, all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday. They're in different time zones, on different networks, and some don't have kickoff times yet.

I built One Page Season because I was tired of keeping that picture in ten browser tabs. You can build a family calendar by hand too, though, and the same principles apply either way. Here's the approach I'd recommend.

Step 1: Decide whose games make the calendar

It sounds obvious, but it's the step that keeps the calendar readable. Have everyone name the teams they actually want to watch, not just the ones they like. A calendar with 15 teams on it is just noise. For most families, 4–8 teams is a sweet spot: each person's NFL team or two, plus each person's college team.

Write the list down with a little detail for each team:

League: NFL or college (and the college team's conference)
Whose team it is: this decides color coding later
Home time zone: useful for road trips and for reading local-time announcements

Step 2: Collect the full regular season

For the NFL, everything comes from one schedule. (Our team schedule pages have every NFL team and many college teams.) For college, each team's schedule comes from its conference and school. Gather the full regular season for every team, including games that don't have a kickoff time yet, and enter them on their dates anyway. A game with "TBD" written next to it is far more useful than a blank square that makes someone think the weekend is free.

When two of your teams play each other, list that game once. Put both colors on it. It's going to be the most talked-about game of the season in your house, and you don't want it showing up twice.

Step 3: Get the time zones right

This is where family calendars usually go wrong. A few rules make it manageable:

Pick one display time zone: where the TV is. Write every kickoff in your home time zone. Don't mix "7:30 ET" on one game with "4:30 local" on another.
Assume announcements are in Eastern time unless they say otherwise. Conferences sometimes add other zones. The Big 12 lists Central times and the Pac-12 lists Pacific, so read the label carefully.
Remember the daylight saving switch. In 2026, U.S. daylight saving time ends on Sunday, Nov. 1, an NFL Sunday. Games before that date are in EDT, games after it in EST. If you're converting by hand, the offset between Eastern and Arizona changes, because Arizona doesn't observe daylight saving time (except the Navajo Nation, according to NIST). A 1:00 p.m. Eastern kickoff is 10:00 a.m. in Arizona in September, but 11:00 a.m. after Nov. 1.
Plan trips in the trip's time zone. If you're traveling for a game, look at that weekend in the destination's local time so the tailgate math works.

Getting this wrong by an hour is exactly how someone walks in at halftime. If you use a tool that converts times for you, double-check that it's set to the time zone where you'll actually be watching.

Step 4: Use two formats, the fridge and the phone

I think most families need both, because they do different jobs.

The fridge printout

A printed season schedule is great for the big picture. At a glance you can see which weekends are busy, which are open, and whose turn it is to pick the game. It's also the version grandparents and kids actually look at.

To make it work:

One page if you can manage it. If not, one page per month.
Color code by person, not by league.
Write the network next to each kickoff. "Where's the game?" is the second-most-asked question after "When is it?"
Leave TBD visible. Pencil in late times when they're announced.
Print a date on it. A printout is a snapshot. Kickoff times and channels get announced or changed after you print it, so "printed Oct. 26" tells everyone how fresh it is.

When to reprint: college kickoff times are often announced 12 days or six days before a game, and the NFL can flex late-season games. Reprinting every couple of weeks, or whenever several TBDs have been filled in, keeps the fridge version honest.

The phone calendar

The phone is for alerts and for staying current. There are two ways to get a schedule into a phone calendar, and the difference matters:

Importing a calendar file (usually an .ics file) copies the games into your calendar as they are on that day. It won't update later. In practice it's a digital printout.
Subscribing to a calendar feed adds a calendar that your app checks again from time to time. When a kickoff time is announced or a game moves, the change can reach your phone without you doing anything. Google Calendar supports this through Other calendars → Add other calendars → From URL. Google's help page says you need to do that in a computer web browser, not in the phone app. After that, the calendar shows up on your phone too. On an iPhone or iPad, Apple Calendar has an Add Subscription Calendar option, and choosing iCloud as the account makes the subscription appear on all your Apple devices. Calendar apps refresh subscriptions on their own schedule, so a brand-new change may not appear instantly.

For a family, subscribing usually wins. One person sets it up, shares or adds the subscription on each family member's phone, and nobody has to re-import anything when Saturday's time is finally set.

Step 5: Add alerts that are actually useful

A reminder at kickoff is a reminder that you're already late. I'd set these instead:

30–60 minutes before kickoff for games you plan to watch live.
The morning of for early starts. NFL international games often kick off at 9:30 a.m. ET, and a West Coast family is getting a 6:30 a.m. game.
No alerts for games you'll only check scores on. Too many alerts and everyone starts ignoring them.

Step 6: Mark the special dates early

Some dates every football household should circle as soon as the schedule is out:

Thanksgiving week. In 2026 the NFL has a Wednesday-night Thanksgiving Eve game, a Thursday tripleheader and a Black Friday game, and plenty of college rivalry games fall on the same weekend.
Christmas. The NFL has three games on Christmas Day in 2026.
Bye weeks and open dates. These are your real free weekends (how NFL bye weeks work).
Late-season Saturdays. The NFL adds Saturday games late in the season, so December Saturdays can have both college and NFL football.

A simple weekly routine

Once the calendar exists, keeping it current takes about five minutes a week:

Monday: check for newly announced college kickoff times (the 12-day announcements usually come Monday; here's why they're so late).
Sunday: check for six-day holds being resolved for the coming Saturday.
Whenever TBDs are filled in: reprint the fridge copy if it's getting stale.
Before a big weekend: confirm the network so nobody is scrambling through apps at kickoff.

If you'd rather skip the manual steps, One Page Season lets you pick up to 12 NFL and college teams, merges their games into one chronological schedule in your time zone, and gives you a printable PDF plus a calendar file or a subscription feed. The PDF and calendar guide walks through each option. Whichever way you build it, the goal is the same: one page everyone in the house can read, and one calendar that stays right.

Sources

Times, TV assignments and prices can change; check the linked sources and providers before you plan or pay. Commentary is our own. Send a correction if you spot an error.