In case you haven’t noticed, college football and ESPN have been running advertisements reminding you that college football playoff games are on New Year’s Eve, and at one point in the lyrically-challenged remake of Auld Lang Syne, they say that “missing out is not an option,” because nothing says “I can’t miss this” like someone needing to remind me that I can’t miss it.
For some reason, I don’t expect Roger Goodell to have a host of mascots and celebrities reminding me that I can’t miss NFL Wild Card Weekend, just in case I’d forgotten.
College football thinks it’s too big to fail and you know what – it probably is. It’s the sales guy in the office that shoves off once a week in a clandestine manner to golf on the clock … but his numbers are always at or near the top of the company.
Realizing the rope he has, he starts showing up to work late, blowing off meetings, and making sure those numbers still hit. Then, occasionally, he’ll sneak whiskey into his lunchtime Pepsi. At some point, he’s going to force himself to fail.
What is failing for the CFB Playoff committee, as it embarks on this “new tradition” of tinkling in the flower beds of the common college football fan and the entire population living in Pacific or Mountain time zones by putting playoff games on New Year’s Eve?
A few weeks ago, college football analyst Gary Danielson appeared on Mad Dog Sports Radio with Chris Russo and said that if ratings dropped 10 to 15 percent from last year, they should be thrilled. Aim high, college football.
The CFB Playoff committee’s insistence on pandering to the Rose Bowl is going to create itself some kind of spin cycle mess starting this year. Whenever the Rose isn’t involved, we’re stuck with this “new tradition” of basically not watching the first game of the playoff, which will start at 2 p.m. PST.
Think about that: one of the three most important games will occur when, assuming (and this is being generous) a “regular” work schedule for folks, only those living in Eastern Standard Time will be able to get home and settle in for even the second half.
The arrogance college football is displaying by doing this will look even worse against a backdrop of unprecedented success in Year One of this thing. Some of it is going to be an organic fall-off.
Last year saw probably the three most polarizing names in the sport in the present day (Ohio State, Alabama, Florida State) in a four-team field rounded out by college football’s ongoing offensive curiosity (Oregon).
This year, the names and story lines don’t drip with the sex appeal of last year’s, so declining interest and attrition of viewership were almost automatic. However, how many eyeballs and how much interest would get the suits back in a board room to discuss how to fix this thing … 10 percent, 15, 25?
There are powerful forces possibly setting themselves up for a fist fight, the immovable object (Rose Bowl) versus the irresistible force (money). Neither typically lose. The Rose Bowl is ostensibly the lady that’s been around the office so long, she’s allowed to come in late, skirt company policy, is held to a lax standard, and gets to make decisions that impact everyone else based on what she and she alone likes even though that’s not her role.
We already understand that playoff games on New Year’s Eve are a joke and suck for anyone with:
- A normal job
- An actual girlfriend
The real key to this: What is the breaking point? What type of numbers will college football need to see, and over what period of time before they decide that making a change is in the best interest of the sport, no matter how much the Rose Bowl pushes back?
The committee can talk all it wants about starting new traditions with NYE, but when you’re skirting this “tradition” whenever the Rose Bowl is not involved in the playoff, all that says is, “our tradition hasn’t changed. The Rose Bowl tells us how high to jump, and we put on our sneakers and bend our knees.”
This year, they weren’t even ready to take the bailout, putting games on Jan. 2, which just happened to be a lucky Saturday without the NFL. Nope. New traditions and whatnot.
At some point, though, new management is going to see that letting the ole secretary run around the office and do nothing to the scorn of those around them is damaging the brand of the organization, and it won’t be worth it to let anyone go carte blanche with company policy, no matter how long they’ve done it before.
If ratings suffer badly this year and maybe next, the new “new tradition” will be the old one: go where the money is. We can’t get there fast enough.
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