Two non-expansion ways to try fixing the College Football Playoff TV ratings

Want to fix the College Football Playoff TV ratings even without expansion? Try these two things.

The curtain has closed on the 2021 college football season, and once again the College Football Playoff struggled to drive in the kind of TV viewership ESPN may have been hoping to see. Sure, nobody in the land of SEC will care after seeing Georgia topple Alabama in the second all-SEC national championship game of the College Football Playoff era, and the third all-SEC championship game since the dawn of the BCS era, but the numbers show a disturbing trend for those invested so heavily in the success of the College Football Playoff.

As noted by Stewart Mandel of The Athletic, Monday night’s television audience for Georgia’s national championship victory over Alabama netted the lowest TV audience of the playoff era with the obvious notable exception of the 2020 season (Alabama defeated Ohio State in a game viewed by just 18.653 million viewers, according to Sports Media Watch). A reported total of 22.6 million tuned into ESPN for coverage of the 2021 national championship game.

Much will be made about these numbers, and it is important to note these figures do not reflect any additional viewers watching through alternative cord-cutting methods. But yes, it does include the total viewership from across ESPN’s multi-network megacast. And a perusal of the press release from ESPN shows the network is sticking to the best-sounding parts by comparing it to the previous year’s ratings, which were abysmal at the end of a severely pandemic-hampered season. While the year-to-date numbers are good to look at, the historical trend with the total viewers has to be a significant concern.

And it just might help provide some juice to potential discussions to adjust the playoff format.

The bottom line is the bottom line, and ESPN and the College Football Playoff are in need of something new. And if the best teams in the country are going to continue to come from the southeast, then something needs to change to get more casual college football viewers to care about the championship game. The obvious answer is… wait for it… expansion.

But expansion is an idea that has been discussed at long lengths over the years. If you have followed or read me for any number of years, then you are probably aware of my stance on playoff expansion. But, to keep this conversation brief, here’s the way I would do it…

But there are still other ways ESPN can tinker with the playoff. The most obvious way to fix the viewership concern may be as simple as adjusting the schedule and broadcast strategy.

Keep the title game on Saturday, and put it on network television

For as much as Disney sets aside to allow ESPN to broadcast the national championship game (and the semifinal games), it just seems so silly to me that ESPN continues to put the game on a Monday night, on cable, against the bread and butter of ABC’s primetime lineup, The Bachelor. The title game still dwarfed the total viewership of The Bachelor, but it just seems so silly to automatically cut yourself off from the maximum potential audience by keeping a game on cable when ESPN has been using ABC to broadcast it’s biggest games of the week all college football season long. And they’ve done this for the entire length of the playoff contract.

So when it comes time to work out a new deal, the College Football Playoff should push for a broadcast partner to put its championship game (and the semifinals) on network television to maximize the reach (and financial incentive) the playoff could be drawing. ESPN could still win that contract with Disney’s checkbook, but if a serious contender wants to raise the stakes, that is the play.

And it just makes so much sense.

You know what else makes sense? Playing college football’s biggest game of the season on a day that is known for college football. It could be risky playing a national title game on a Saturday because surely the games have been played on Monday nights for researched reasons, but the gripes about playing a national title game on a Monday night have been persistent for years. You cut off your potential viewership the later you start a game on a weeknight at a certain point.

You know who knows this? The NFL.

The NFL players its championship game on a Sunday night, but the game kicks off at a much more satisfactory start time on a day dedicated solely for the game. A champion is crowned before 10 PM on the east coast. It’s fantastic. Why hasn’t college football caught on to this easily-repeatable recipe?

Dedicate an entire Saturday to the national championship game. Kick the game off at 7:00 p.m. ET on network television. Watch the ratings flow in.

This may not steer us away from an all-SEC title game in the future, but they are some easy fixes that can be tried out.

Of course, the NFL may be blocking that possibility too. The expansion of the NFL’s regular season, with ESPN being a broadcast partner, has seemingly closed this on-ramp before it could ever be constructed.

And if the NFL has already blocked this from reality, then shame on the powers sitting in place leading the College Football Playoff for not being as forward-thinking as the true kings of sports media, the National Football League.

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