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CFP Ratings down...

ChiefJusticeMarshall

ChiefJusticeMarshall

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I think it just has blended too much in with the NFL playoffs and have become a bit of an afterthought. Think about it, 2 of the bluest blue bloods, the final 4 were all blue bloods with 4 of the top 6 fanbases overall. And still down.

www.espn.com

CFP title game viewership down from last year

Ohio State's win over Notre Dame in Monday night's CFP National Championship game was the most-watched game of the season. However, it was a double-digit drop in viewers from last year.
www.espn.com www.espn.com
 
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Totally agree. I think they need to move the national championship back to the Monday following New Year’s Day; there’s enough of a gap between conference championship weekend and the CFP First Round that they can move it up.

Ideally, I’d love for the Rose Bowl to decide the national champion on New Year’s Day each year, but that’d never happen for $$$ reasons.
 
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Get rid of conference championships; expand this thing to 16; start two weeks after the season ends.

Round of 16 - December 14th
Round of 8 - 21st
Round of 4 - NYE/NYD
National Championship - Following Monday

College football season felt like a good movie that just didn't need to be as long as it was. You already lose a ton of momentum with that month off - particularly now that bowl games mean nothing and fans of teams not in the playoff emotionally check out.
 
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TheWerewolfFromTwilight said:
We're still pretending to play school? I thought that facade went out the window years ago.
Click to expand...

yep, when was the last time you heard of a players major during a broadcast? The PG had a story last season about Gandy I think doing a broadcast internship with the Fan. Or maybe announcing a few high school games? You can see how that academic experience motivated him to stay at Pitt.
 
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TheWerewolfFromTwilight said:
Get rid of conference championships; expand this thing to 16; start two weeks after the season ends.

Round of 16 - December 14th
Round of 8 - 21st
Round of 4 - NYE/NYD
National Championship - Following Monday

College football season felt like a good movie that just didn't need to be as long as it was. You already lose a ton of momentum with that month off - particularly now that bowl games mean nothing and fans of teams not in the playoff emotionally check out.
Click to expand...

College football still the best regular season with an anti-climatic post-season. Didn't really change much with expanded playoff if anything it got worse. Your model is good, although I'd maybe take it a step further and just have an 8 team playoff, and have the championship on NYD in the granddaddy of them the Rose Bowl. Ratings are always very good on NYD and it is still synonymous with College football.
 
CJsE said:
That’s finals week for like 80% of the NCAA.
Click to expand...
The FCS has been playing playoff games during that week for years (as well as having playoff games the week before and the week after, which are probably finals week for the remaining 20% of schools).
 
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ChiefJusticeMarshall said:
I think it just has blended too much in with the NFL playoffs and have become a bit of an afterthought. Think about it, 2 of the bluest blue bloods, the final 4 were all blue bloods with 4 of the top 6 fanbases overall. And still down.

www.espn.com

CFP title game viewership down from last year

Ohio State's win over Notre Dame in Monday night's CFP National Championship game was the most-watched game of the season. However, it was a double-digit drop in viewers from last year.
www.espn.com www.espn.com
Click to expand...

How sustainable will the live gate be? To make it to the final, you're asking fans to make 3 road trips within the span of less than a month. Sure, OSU, Georgia, etc, can probably hang. But if TCU or Washington make it to the finals again, I think there will be a lot of tickets to be had.
 
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ChiefJusticeMarshall said:
I think it just has blended too much in with the NFL playoffs and have become a bit of an afterthought. Think about it, 2 of the bluest blue bloods, the final 4 were all blue bloods with 4 of the top 6 fanbases overall. And still down.

www.espn.com

CFP title game viewership down from last year

Ohio State's win over Notre Dame in Monday night's CFP National Championship game was the most-watched game of the season. However, it was a double-digit drop in viewers from last year.
www.espn.com www.espn.com
Click to expand...

How about not scheduling it opposite a Presidential inauguration? Freaking idiots!

Also, yes, it's too late in January.

Final Four should be Jan 1

Using this year:

1st Round: Dec 14
Quarterfinals: Dec 21
Semis: Jan 1
Final: Jan 9

No need to use bowl games as hosts. This country offers plenty of large stadiums which who are more than capable of hosting. First 2 rounds should be on campus.
 
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Sean Miller Fan said:
How about not scheduling it opposite a Presidential inauguration? Freaking idiots!

Also, yes, it's too late in January.

Final Four should be Jan 1

Using this year:

1st Round: Dec 14
Quarterfinals: Dec 21
Semis: Jan 1
Final: Jan 9

No need to use bowl games as hosts. This country offers plenty of large stadiums which who are more than capable of hosting. First 2 rounds should be on campus.
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They weren’t in conflict with the inauguration.

College football simply isn’t that popular
 
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Slick Manager of Champs said:
How sustainable will the live gate be? To make it to the final, you're asking fans to make 3 road trips within the span of less than a month. Sure, OSU, Georgia, etc, can probably hang. But if TCU or Washington make it to the finals again, I think there will be a lot of tickets to be had.
Click to expand...
The easy solution is to play all but the national title game at the higher seed's home stadium. Just follow the NFL and FCS model. Only play the national title game at a neutral site.
 
Not surprised with the rating, the average sports fan stops caring about college football at about 9:00 PM January 1st, only boomers think Notre Dame is anything special and most of them are in bed or watching FOX News at 9PM on a Monday, no one outside of Ohio cares about Ohio State, neither team had a superstar player, people are footballed out after two days of NFL playoff games, and the biggie the conference expansions have turned a huge amount of casual sports fans off of the sport.
 
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PittPharm2002 said:
They weren’t in conflict with the inauguration.

College football simply isn’t that popular
Click to expand...

Yes they were. On a winter weekday/night, the national championship of America's 2nd most popular sports league (or 3rd if some metric shows the NBA as most popular) should be the national story. Instead, the nation had Inauguration Day on its mine. OSU/ND was an afterthought. My guess is that primetime cable news ratings, especially on Fox News was near record highs for coverage of the rally or party or whatever Trump and King Elon were doing at the Wizards' arena. It is not a good idea to go head to head with such an important daylong event.
 
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ChiefJusticeMarshall said:
I think it just has blended too much in with the NFL playoffs and have become a bit of an afterthought. Think about it, 2 of the bluest blue bloods, the final 4 were all blue bloods with 4 of the top 6 fanbases overall. And still down.

www.espn.com

CFP title game viewership down from last year

Ohio State's win over Notre Dame in Monday night's CFP National Championship game was the most-watched game of the season. However, it was a double-digit drop in viewers from last year.
www.espn.com www.espn.com
Click to expand...
uh, rumor has it there was another nationwide event going on that evening that had not occurred during other CFP championship games that may have taken a few eyeballs away...nothing to do with NFL playoff overload....
 
S.R.M. said:
The easy solution is to play all but the national title game at the higher seed's home stadium. Just follow the NFL and FCS model. Only play the national title game at a neutral site.
Click to expand...
My initial thought after reading your comment was that the NCAA wants to "preserve" the grandeur of the NYD Bowl Games (Orange, Cotton, Sugar, Rose, Peach, Fiesta). But with the added CFP games the traditional "feel" of those Bowl Games has diminished. That, and with the sole exception of the Rose Bowl, those games are not played at a "special" site. All are played at stadiums that house an NFL team

As we all know, it's about the TV $$. So why not (as you suggest) follow the NFL/FCS model? The only reason I can think of is that all of those stadium/bowl venues are either in warm climates (Rose and Orange) or are domed (Sugar, Cotton, Peach, Fiesta)
 
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upj87 said:
uh, rumor has it there was another nationwide event going on that evening that had not occurred during other CFP championship games that may have taken a few eyeballs away...nothing to do with NFL playoff overload....
Click to expand...
The Inauguration was at Noon, it had nothing to do with the low rating, plus didn’t Trump pop up at halftime? There was nothing appealing about this game, both teams are boring, neither has a superstar player, and the casual sports fan has NFL playoffs on their mind. Joe Six Pack who lives in New Jersey, North Carolina or even Texas doesn’t care about Ohio State vs. Notre Dame on a Monday night in mid-January.
 
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happjack said:
The Inauguration was at Noon, it had nothing to do with the low rating, plus didn’t Trump pop up at halftime? There was nothing appealing about this game, both teams are boring, neither has a superstar player, and the casual sports fan has NFL playoffs on their mind. Joe Six Pack who lives in New Jersey, North Carolina or even Texas doesn’t care about Ohio State vs. Notre Dame on a Monday night in mid-January.
Click to expand...

6.5 million would-be college football fans were watching Fox News for Trumpmania coverage between 7PM-11PM.

And it's not just the direct competition. Monday was Trump Day for a good portion of America. It was like Christmas, your mind just isn't on a college football game. I dont think you can fully explain how excited these people were for the return of their God. It is tough to switch up your mindset and put on college football.

Media Relations | Fox News

press.foxnews.com press.foxnews.com

CFP 22.1 million

Fox News Primetime Teump Coverage: 6.5 million

I would venture to say that 50%-75% of that Fox News audience would have watched the CFP if it wasn't Inauguration Day.
 
College football fans get butt hurt too easily. A large number of fans end the season butt hurt that their school didn't meat unrealistic expectations. There are fans butt hurt their school didn't make the playoff despite their certainty they should. Then there are butt hurt fans that are mad their school lost or their conference didn't make it. Heck, even the people that cover these schools get butt hurt because their assumptions about the natural order of things were broken.

When you have so many bitter and butt hurt fans, they end up being dismissive of the championship and the champion so they just don't bother watching.
 
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TheWerewolfFromTwilight said:
We're still pretending to play school? I thought that facade went out the window years ago.
Click to expand...
But that's another domino on their legal defense. The only reason they haven't been completely obliterated in court is because of their student-athlete distinction between college football and the pros, and their claim that the very distinction is what generates consumer interest in the sport. It is their one and only defense against any claims. Every move that they make disregarding the student part, the faster their destruction.
 
I actually thought the 5 straight days of football was sweet between the CFPs and NFL playoffs, but college football felt like an afterthought.

There is too much of a gap between the regular season and postseason. I wouldn't wait two weeks. Ditch the conference championships and start the playoffs the week after the regular season ends. Play games on campus until the championship.

Forever, college's biggest day is New Year's Day and after that interest decreases. Make that your big game day.
 
Burgh15 said:
I actually thought the 5 straight days of football was sweet between the CFPs and NFL playoffs, but college football felt like an afterthought.

There is too much of a gap between the regular season and postseason. I wouldn't wait two weeks. Ditch the conference championships and start the playoffs the week after the regular season ends. Play games on campus until the championship.

Forever, college's biggest day is New Year's Day and after that interest decreases. Make that your big game day.
Click to expand...

Its always felt like the season ends on NYD. Then the old championship a week later or this new format were just like one-off games during the off-season. I actually feel that way about basketball too. I watch the Final Four but in terms of my excitement/interest level, for me, its always been:

1. NCAAT 1st weekend
2. Conference Championship weekend
3. Sweet 16 weekend
4. Final Four weekend

Yes, my interest goes down each weekend and the anticipation of the tournament and who's in and who's out is more interesting to me during that conference championship weekend than the Sweet 16 and Final Four
 
Too many games. The CFP is a thing unto itself. I don’t feel like it really determines the best team.
 
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boseman7 said:
Too many games. The CFP is a thing unto itself. I don’t feel like it really determines the best team.
Click to expand...
I thought the opposite. IMO, Oregon and Ohio State were the best two teams. The bracket should've made it so they could've played in the finals. Since it didn't, the expanded playoff allowed Ohio State to play for the title and they won it.
 
boseman7 said:
Too many games. The CFP is a thing unto itself. I don’t feel like it really determines the best team.
Click to expand...
Burgh15 said:
I thought the opposite. IMO, Oregon and Ohio State were the best two teams. The bracket should've made it so they could've played in the finals. Since it didn't, the expanded playoff allowed Ohio State to play for the title and they won it.
Click to expand...
I thought OSU was the best team all year. OSU nearly won the regular season match up with Oregon, that game was almost a toss up, and it was at home for Oregon so I thought OSU would have prevailed at a neutral site. And OSU's defense became pretty much incredible after that game, it was like some sort of light bulb went off for them after that game and whatever their weaknesses were they addressed them. So OSU was very elite at that point and definitely improved from that point on. Michigan loss was OSU's offenses fault (or you can blame it on the rivalry factor), not the defense.

So I'd argue the 12 team playoffs did determine the best team. If the 4 team playoff was still in place, OSU would not have been in the playoffs and would not have had the chance to play for the national title.
 
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Burgh15 said:
I thought the opposite. IMO, Oregon and Ohio State were the best two teams. The bracket should've made it so they could've played in the finals. Since it didn't, the expanded playoff allowed Ohio State to play for the title and they won it.
Click to expand...

Remember it was me who said 10-2 OSU should have been seeded ahead of a team with the same record, who they beat at their place.
 
pittdan77 said:
College football fans get butt hurt too easily. A large number of fans end the season butt hurt that their school didn't meat unrealistic expectations. There are fans butt hurt their school didn't make the playoff despite their certainty they should. Then there are butt hurt fans that are mad their school lost or their conference didn't make it. Heck, even the people that cover these schools get butt hurt because their assumptions about the natural order of things were broken.

When you have so many bitter and butt hurt fans, they end up being dismissive of the championship and the champion so they just don't bother watching.
Click to expand...
I’m butthurt about continuing conference realignment and consolidation of power into the sec and big ten. So outside of Pitt, I pretty much stopped watching.
 
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ThePanthers said:
I’m butthurt about continuing conference realignment and consolidation of power into the sec and big ten. So outside of Pitt, I pretty much stopped watching.
Click to expand...
I surprised myself with how much I did watch of the CFP. Didn't sit and watch any of the games in their entirety but I watched more than I thought I would.

Weirdly, college football fans seem way more emotional about their programs than even a Yinzer does about the Stillers. I know pro fans can be way over the top but you also don't see 100k people religiously packing into NFL stadiums either. Seems like a very small subset of "crazed" fans. I know a lot of people that have PSU season tickets and they can't even articulate why they enjoy watching PSU walk over dregs most of the season. They just know they have to show up, do the tailgate, and wear all of the gear. They get strangely angry if you say anything they perceive as a threat to their fandom (you know, things like Joe Knew or they specialize in cupcakes). They also get extremely jealous of other schools. Especially B1G powers. Just odd.
 
pittdan77 said:
I surprised myself with how much I did watch of the CFP. Didn't sit and watch any of the games in their entirety but I watched more than I thought I would.
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They felt a lot like a typical bowl games.
Most bowl games are just background.

We had every one of them on the tv. But as something to have on the tv while the family played board games or decorated Christmas cookies.

They felt like something you had to have on, but didn’t have to “watch.”
 
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TheSpecialSauce said:
They just announced it will be held in Vegas on Monday, January 25, 2027.
Click to expand...

Wow, they really like to drag this out. I'd guess

Friday, Jan 1 - Quarters
Thursday and Friday Jan 14-15 - semis
Monday, Jan 25 - Final

The NC game is always going to be late January now because they like to outsource the Quarterfinals and Semifnals so they need to run those 4 bowl games on Dec 31/Jan 1. The semis should be Jan 1.
 
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