Who watches all those damn bowl games, anyway? Well, somebody does.
March Madness is huge, right? This year, the multiweek extravaganza has had its usual share of upsets, an exhilarated coach falling off his rolling chair after a victory and the presence of a dominant Kentucky team. Nearly 11.6 million brackets were submitted to ESPN.com’s annual contest. So what in college sports could be a bigger fan draw than the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament?
How about a bunch of bowl games? Yes, college football bowl games — nearly all of which had no meaning other than providing athletes with a postseason experience.
It is an imperfect comparison: a tournament with a natural direction of 68 teams reduced to a final pairing versus a bowl system that only this year introduced a four-team playoff to decide a national champion — the only instance in the history of bowl games when a winner advanced to the next level.
So it is worth noting that none of the 38 bowl games carried by the ESPN empire last season had fewer viewers than the 1.1 million who tuned in for the inaugural Camellia Bowl from Montgomery, Ala., while nine early-round N.C.A.A. tournament matchups generated audiences below that figure — Texas Southern-Arizona, a TNT telecast, was ranked last at 501,000 — based on the available data from 40 of the 48 games played before Thursday.
And I thought brackets über alles.
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. The typical casual fan filling out an office tournament bracket doesn’t care about watching all the games, just seeing the results. College football, with all its warts, still manages to attract more dedicated fans. The basketball numbers will improve as the tourney progresses, but the bottom end is what it is. The difference is that college football keeps adding minor bowl games and we keep watching as they get added on.
The lessons to be drawn from this – why we have all those bowls, why ESPN invests in all those bowl games, what happens to fan interest in the wake of postseason expansion – are pretty obvious. Unless you come from the “nevermind, The New York Times sux” school of sports analysis, that is.
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A tradition with my family and friends is playing ‘pick’em’ on all the bowl games. We love bowl season and watch many of them. SEC is the main focus of course. By the way. You think you know something about college football until you try to pick the winners of all the bowl games…the results can be humbling.
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Hell, Pete…the results can be humbling even when you do know a little about the teams.
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Have you been missing our after-season “Pickin’ with Points” contest named after a famous Coach and ranker of great teams? You should at least go read the results to know the names that have been humbled greatly here. Thing is, we all let ourselves in for it, so if your ego won’t take it, don’t even try.
“Humbled and crumbled” is our watchword. Even the lucky admit it.
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I am a college football traditionalist for the most part, and don’t really have a dog in this fight — the tournament is great for basketball, and I like the bowls for football. But as for this particular cherry-picked piece of evidence, I wonder what other games were being played at the same time as the Texas Southern- Arizona game. There were four games running simultaneously during most of the first (oh, sorry, “second”) round. If we are trying to judge the basketball audience, we should add up the viewership of all of those games.
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College football represents tradition, dedication and all those other things that north eastern liberals hate. There is nothing artificial, astroturfed or manipulated about the game… at least in the perfect sense.
As goes college football … so goes the country. That is why myself and many others are so against paying players and changing the game from what it is. Now if someone can just bring the hammer down on auburn… for the sake of the country.
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Good lord you’re full of shit.
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You must love auburn.
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South eastern liberal here.
And I damn sure favor bringing the hammer down on Auburn.
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I hear a lot of talk about expanding the CFB playoff to 8 teams. The model would be all 5 Power 5 conference champions plus the next 3 highest rated teams. I am not saying I support this concept, just commenting that some are talking about it. If that were done and if some of the existing bowls were used as the playoff venues, such would take on a “March Madness: type of aura. The first round would be four games, the second round would be two games, then the 1 game final…add that up and that would be 7 bowl games used in the playoff. What about the bowls not in the playoff? They could still exist and be entertainment to keep everybody occupied until the playoffs start. A thought.
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Yeah, that’s it.
You must love hearing yourself pontificate.
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This was meant for doofusdawg above.
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I prefer to have a conversation. If we ever… God forbid see a kid break his neck on national tv then the vast majority of schools… mostly in the northern part of the country will cancel their football programs and what we will be left with is a small group of southern schools left alone to fend off the national media cries of racism and slavery… all to the benefit of ncaa basketball… nba basketball and a huge sound of money heading north… back to it’s rightful place before the goal posts rusted.
I always thought the problem with soccer was the field was just a little to bigg.
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I agree…the world is out to get you.
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Nice leap… I couldn’t imagine a world without college football either.
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You’re accusing me of making a leap after the nonsense you posted?
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMklSv_VlxE. You mean like that hit?
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Yep… fortunately the young man did not lose his life… as bad as that was if that happens live on national tv and heaven forbid someone dies then I think football as we know it is over. Basketball is so much less violent and there are too many political forces ready to swoop in and “fix” things given the opportunity… just like they fix everything else. Thanks for posting that. I hope the young man is improving and finds happiness in his life.
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“If we ever…God forbid see a kid break his neck on national tv…”
That’s exactly what Debby showed you. Why are you backtracking on your inane babble?
And what is with the basketball fixation? Do you hate it or something? Are you afraid of it “taking over”?
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in comparing the bowl ratings vs tourney Bball ratings – the 1st couple of rounds have multiple games on at the same time. Do any of the bowl games (especailly the early, lower ranked bowls) go against each other? That would effect the ratings of a single game. Wonder what the combined ratings of simultaneous Bball games compared?
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This ^^ – You can’t compare the two realistically, even if there was another bowl game occurring – not to mention the number of first round games that occur during working hours for much of the country. Having 500,000 eyeballs watching one of four concurrently broadcast games at 2pm on a Friday is pretty impressive (even moreso when you consider that texas southern had a modest at best basketball following).
Does anyone know if the ratings take into account the online streaming? If not, then those numbers should jump quite a bit.
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The Camellia Bowl, which kicked off at 9:15 at night, a few days before Christmas, had a must-see pairing: Bowling Green versus South Alabama. If the half-million eyeballs for the opening game of a national tourney is pretty impressive, how would you describe an audience over twice that size for a low-visibility bowl game?
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I wasn’t intending to say that it wasn’t impressive, only that it is difficult to compare the two. If there were three other bowl games on at the same time (including several other high profile programs), do you think the number for the Camellia bowl would have been as high? I have my doubts, but history has proven that Americans will tune in for any football games. And to be fair, a program like Arizona on its own carries a lot of viewers where BG and South Alabama do not.
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A point I was making with the post is what you just wrote – Americans will tune in for any football games. They don’t have to be important.
So all this complaining about there being too many bowl games is really missing the point.
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