blueidaho Wrote:

Quote:no matter who plays in them, BCs, non-BCS, WAC, CUSA, MWC, etc, they all get similar ratings- around a 2.0-2.5 rating. The exceptions are

The MWC must have more than their share of exceptions because this is what I come up with for average bowl ratings:

WAC 2.61

CUSA 2.28

MAC 2.08

MWC 1.9


Liberty
Fresno State-Tulsa
3.31

Las Vegas
California-Brigham Young
2.40

MPC Computers
Boston College-Boise State
2.33

Fort Worth
Kansas-Houston
2.28

Hawaii
Central Florida-Nevada
2.20

Motor City
Memphis-Akron
2.17

Emerald
Utah-Georgia Tech
2.16

Houston
Texas Christian-Iowa State
2.15

GMAC
Toledo-UTEP
1.98

New Orleans
Southern Miss-Arkansas State
1.71

Poinsettia
Colorado State-Navy
0.89

Look, just try to dig a little deeper, OK. Take the Poinsettia. It had the worst of all worlds. It was on ESPN2 and it started at 10:30 eastern. Games that are in that slot always do poorly (and you'll notice none are slated for that spot this year). For example, the Silicon Valley used to have the same slot (although it was on FSN part of the time). It had a 0.8 rating in 2002 for Fresno-GT, a 0.9 rating for Fresno-UCLA in 2003 and a 0.6 rating for Troy-Northern Ill in 2004. All games started in that 10:00-10:30 eastern slot. Fresno States ratings the last four years have been 0.8, 0.9, 1.7 and 3.3. Did they suddenly get popular last year or do the poor ratings have more to do with the time slot and channel? I say the other factors play the biggest role.

Another example: At first glance the Liberty seemed to do much better than the Houston Bowl, which started about an hour and a half after the Liberty. The Houston garnered a 2.15 rating and the Liberty 3.3. If you don't dig deeper, one might errantly try to attribute the ratings difference to the attractiveness of the participants or their conferences. But if you dig deeper, you'll find that the Houston had two major factors against it- it was on ESPN2 and went up against the NFL in the second half (SD-Denver). In relative terms the Houston was actually a ratings success- it was actually the third highest ESPN2 game ever (and by a more direct comparison, the NCSt-USF game that preceeded it on ESPN2 had a 1.52 rating).

Granted there are a lot of variables to try to juggle, but if you look closely you can see patterns that emerge. No, Fresno didn't suddenly become popular. They probably have had about the same "popularity" the whole time. They just played at the right time on the right channel this year. No, college football fans didn't avoid watching the MWC take on a military acadamy because of who was playing. They didn't watch because they were in bed. The message board ratings chest thumping game is one that for entertainment purposes only. My guess is that its hard enough for network and advertising execs to figure it all out, let alone a Joe Shmoe on a message board.

BTW, if you do an average bowl ratings from last year the MWC comes out way ahead. Why? because of the Fiesta bowl and its inherent better ratings, not because we were more popular last year.

some of my sources:
http://www.bcsfootball.org/index2.cfm?page=tvratings02
http://www.bcsfootball.org/index2.cfm?page=tvratings03
http://www.bcsfootball.org/index2.cfm?page=tvratings04
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._n14735151
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/fo...index.html
http://football.about.com/cs/bowlgames/a...3bowls.htm
http://gofrogs.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/...06aab.html

Frog, you've dug deeper than I'm willing to do right now and make some good points. Still, I'm glad we have the later bowl dates even if there are other issues to consider.

ESPN knows all of the factors concerning ratings and if they give a bum time to a bowl, they just don't give a crap about that bowl game.

ESPN ownership of bowl games is for content only. They need something to show in December. You can see by the bowl schedule which bowl games ESPN wants to showcase. Football in December gets better ratings than any other sport. Without bowl games, content is quite limited.

Putting a bowl game on CSTV would get something like a .001 rating but at least it would have something to air. What will CSTV show in the daytime hours in the month of December? Reruns...With the "mtn", it will be worse as they will not have the D2 sports to show or any other conference games of any sort.

The original post was about ESPN not doing pro sports. Good grief, the summer programing is bad enough now. Take out the pro sports and there would be little worth seeing. Example...see CSTV. D2 women's lacross on a replay basis (10 times) is not my idea of quality programing. I can't wait to see the filler that will be "mtn". Nine football games (most available within OOC) will take up about 30 hours time out of a 168 hour week. So, will they show each of those games 4 or more times in a week. Cut the number in half when conference play starts and one can see the problem with content. "mtn" has to show just MWC content and some of that will be on ESPN and CSTV. They could have a little as 10 hours a week of live content for major sports. Maybe "mtn" should be looking into becoming a shopping network and do sports to fill in.