quo vadis
Legend
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RE: This is what I think the CFB Playoff format should look like
(08-23-2019 09:39 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (08-23-2019 05:51 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (08-22-2019 05:57 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (08-22-2019 05:28 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (08-22-2019 10:57 AM)e-parade Wrote: Sure, there's interest from lots of people. Lots of older people who have been watching the sport forever. And sure, in some regions, younger people are still getting interested because their teams are constantly in the hunt for a national championship.
Outside of that, attendance figures have been declining and are at their lowest point since 1996 overall, and lowest point for many conferences in quite some time:
Only the ACC, AAC, and MAC have increased attendance year over year.
Is it a dire difference? No, but it is declining and 7 of the 8 past years have shown a decline in attendance over the previous year.
Sounds like it could use a boost of new blood in fans to get back to where it was before.
Be smug all you want with that coffee emoji, but it really adds nothing to the conversation other than showing the fact that you for some reason think you're better than everyone and have a more valuable statement to add. Considering you were citing attendance figures in your own reasoning as a good sign when in reality they are declining and have been steadily for years now, you may want to step down off you high horse and at least consider that not everything is perfect as is.
I will keep using the coffee emoji when i feel like it. Relax, it's just an emoji.
As for your argument, yes, attendance has slipped the past few years, but first, it's still very high, and the money has never been better, and second, it's one thing to say attendance has slipped, and then make a claim that a change in playoff formats will attract new fans and bolster it. A whole lot of things could be causing these attendance slips, none of which have anything to do with playoff format and thus wouldn't likely be altered by the adoption of a new system. I mean, let's face it, it's always been the case that the vast majority of college teams go in to a given season with no realistic chance to win the national title, and not because of the system, but just because they aren't nearly good enough. Yet people follow and root for and go to games for their schools anyway. It's always been that way.
So basically, your assertion that a "rigged committee system" is turning off potential fans is just that, an assertion.
I don’t think a rigged system is turning off potential fans per se. It’s more that it’s becoming harder and harder to sell games that aren’t meaningful in the national championship race. Maybe that was always an unlikely issue for regular season games at a place like my alma mater of Illinois, but it’s a much different problem when the game you can’t sell is, say, the Big Ten or Pac-12 Championship Game when the participants aren’t in competition for the playoff.
More importantly, there’s a huge difference between a critical mass of schools being alive for a division championship and, as a result, still alive for the national championship race in an auto-bid world late into the season versus having the vast majority of schools being effectively eliminated from that national title race by the end of September in today’s system (and any other system that doesn’t have auto-bids).
The NFL knows this better than anyone: as great as it is for them to have name brand teams like the Cowboys doing well nationally, they know that there’s no more powerful force for TV ratings than for *your* team (whoever that might be) being mathematically in the hunt for the playoffs as late into the season as possible... because not only do you watch your own team’s games more, but you also watch all other NFL games more. That’s something that college football has been completely lacking for essentially its entire history. That might have been fine when fan bases were simply satisfied in getting to a bowl game, but that’s increasingly not going to suffice in today’s environment. There’s truly a ton of power in being able to say, “If we win the next 3 games and X/Y/Z happens in these other games, then we WILL win our division and we WILL be in the playoff if we win that conference championship game.” Ohio State and Alabama might continue winning as many conference championships as they did before, but the most powerful draw for any fan base is having as many as possibly simply mathematically being in the hunt in November (as opposed to most of college football having no chance by the end of September).
I just don't know. There are so many factors that go in to TV ratings. E.g., even the mighty NFL suffered TV ratings declines for 3 straight years, from 2015 - 2017. This past year, ratings were up 5% over 2017, but many attributed that to rules tweaks that resulted in record league scoring, and also the fluke of a record number of very close games, decided by 3 points or less. The playoff format that keeps a lot of teams in the hunt until late in the season was the same the whole time.
And if there is a serious ratings decline going on in college football, it hasn't shown up where it matters most, the money. Even the most recent signings of conferences, like the B1G, has been for record amounts of money. If we do reach a point where big conferences are seeing pay cuts or disappointing media deals, that very well could be an impetus for trying something radically new on the post-season format. But so far, we haven't seen that.
Yes, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what causes ratings to rise and drop, but there is a very tangible reason why you saw NFL ratings increase last year: Chicago was a playoff team for the first time in years and the "new" Los Angeles market had their two teams make the playoffs. That drove higher local ratings in the 2nd and 3rd largest markets in the country for both their own teams and for other NFL games that didn't involve their own teams.
College football TV revenue might be high, but I'd argue that they're also leaving money on the table (whereas the NFL is maximizing the value of their TV packages).
I don't doubt at all that college football will not leave any significant money on the table. Meaning, if 5 years from now, when the CFP is coming to an end and decisions are being made about a successor, ESPN and FOX and CBS and whoever else says "we will give you a very significant raise over the current CFP, but we need an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 conferences, because we think ratings will go up a lot if a bunch of 5-4 Illinois and Mississippi States and Arizona State teams are still alive for the playoffs in early November because despite their mediocre records they are still technically alive for their conference auto-bids" then I have no doubt the P5 will adopt that kind of system.
But I don't think that likely. A big reason is I think there's a big difference in the nature of NFL and college fandom: NFL teams on the one had represent much bigger populations. The Bears represent Chicago, the Patriots represent New England, the Seahawks the Pacific Northwest, etc. But, the fandom is also less I don't know, fundamental, because fans know that these teams really only represent their owners. In the end, any of them - save I think the Packers - can pull up stakes, the Oakland Raiders can become the Las Vegas Raiders, etc.
In contrast, even big college programs like Alabama and Texas only represent a small slice of fandom. But on the other, the fandom is much more essential, the Alabama Crimson Tide can't leave Tuscaloosa and become the Las Vegas Crimson Tide - or at least nobody has tried that yet. And there are closer ties that bind - someone supports the Tide because they went to Alabama, or their dad or mom did, or they live in a part of Alabama where everyone is a Tide fan and has been for 100 years, it's just a part of the culture.
What that IMO means is a lower ceiling for popularity and support compared to NFL, but a higher floor. College fans are probably more likely to support their programs even during the lean times.
And what *this* means is that interest in college football is probably significantly less manipulable by playoff schemes that keep teams in the hunt longer. In Washington, if the Redskins are 2-6 and obviously out of the playoffs, you can almost feel the air let out of the balloon of support, for that season. The stadium will be half-empty, fans will tune in to other games, etc. At Ohio State, 90,000 are still going to be in the stands, though not 100,000 as if they were 9-1.
A lot of verbiage to say that IMO, I don't think there's a significant pool of people out there who do not currently support a college team, but would be if they are still alive for a playoff at 5-4 than if they aren't at that same record.
But that's just my gut feeling, can't prove it.
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