(01-19-2018 11:06 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(01-18-2018 11:37 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(01-18-2018 11:19 AM)billybobby777 Wrote:  

(01-18-2018 10:51 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-18-2018 10:29 AM)bullet Wrote:  Interesting on value of regular season vs. bowls:

"...1. (1) Alabama at (6) Auburn – Saturday, Nov. 25 on CBS – 13.66 million viewers.
Overall, only three bowl games outdrew the top regular-season game in viewership – and those were all associated with the CFP bracket (the Sugar and Rose semi-finals and the National Championship game). In other words, no non-bracket bowl game attracted more viewers than did Alabama at Auburn in Week 13. And, rather than being literally the only game on TV, the Iron Bowl was one of 43 games played that Saturday.
Of the three teams mentioned twice in the top five of regular-season viewership, two drew in more viewers in their regular-season highs than during bowl season:
Ohio State had 9.468 million tune in to its Cotton Bowl appearance vs. USC. Compare that to the 10.15 million it drew at Michigan and the 12.92 it garnered in the Big Ten title game vs. Wisconsin.
Auburn had 8.377 million viewers watch its Peach Bowl appearance vs. UCF (the least viewed of the six rotating CFP bowl games). Compare that to the 13.47 million who tuned in for the SEC title game vs. Georgia and the 13.66 million who watched the Iron Bowl vs. Alabama...."

The author seems to think his numbers denigrate the bowls, but in fact they show how important they are. E.g., the discussion of Auburn makes the Peach look bad, but it was still the 3rd-highest rated game Auburn played all last year, and they draw good ratings. The Peach even beat out the first Auburn - Georgia game.

And for UCF, it surely was far and away their most-watched game. Heck, all the other games UCF played put together drew about 9.5 million viewers. The Peach did 8.3 million by itself.

The article shows what a BOON these bowl games are exposure-wise for the G5 teams. E.g., Troy's bowl game drew 1.3 million viewers, more than double the viewers for any other game, except for LSU vs Troy, and it even beat that game by 500k viewers.

These bowl games, even the rinky-dink ones, are nice exposure for the G5.

Exactly....look at these 2 bowls:
Armed Forces Bowl, Army vs San Diego St. 2 unranked non cartel schools. 3.5 million viewers.
Las Vegas Bowl: Boise St vs Oregon. Unranked schools, one a bad 7-5 PAC team the other a G5. 3.8 million viewers.
Those numbers are double some ranked cartel school matchups like #16 Michigan St vs #18 Washington St...1.3 million viewers.

Alright guys, this is exactly why we aren't moving to an expanded playoff. Because, if we did ESPN turns a dead time money winner, the bowl season, into an afterthought. You need quality also ran schools to play as the headliners in these bowls because without them there wouldn't be enough schools with just the bottom of the P conferences and the best of the G5 to keep them going. There is too much profit here for ESPN at a down time to let them go for the sake of 4 high dollar overhead playoff games.

Now toss in the fact that the school presidents don't want an expanded playoff, A.D.'s don't want it, the coaches don't want another week of work during the holiday season, especially the ones that might have to prepare for 3 huge games, and the players are already reticent to play in the postseason if they are high draft selections, and I think you can see now why nobody but sportswriters who need to stir readers even talk about it.

I disagree on this. Bowl season will,be just fine with an expanded playoff. Thats 4 games. We used have only a half dozen or so bowls. Now we have 40. The bowl ratings are doing just fine. As long as any random bowl game is only going against Big Bang reruns (or at best--one other bowl) the ratings are going to be fine.

What 4 more playoff games does is double the number of viewers with an extremely high interest in the playoff and doubles the amount of interest in the last weeks of the season because twice as many teams still have a shot at an 8 team field (as opposed to a 4 team field). It also more than doubles the number of HUGE viewer postseason games from 3 to 7.

Playoff expansion is a guaranteed money maker and its happening.

I agree that we are likely to expand to an 8-team playoff - seven long years from now.

But, I'm not sure if it will be the money-maker you think. The P5 conference title games are quasi-quarterfinals as it is - this year, it was obvious that the SEC CG and ACC CG winners would make the playoffs, and Oklahoma was in if they won the Big 12 title game and Wisconsin was in if they won the B1G title game.

A 4-team playoff doesn't cannibalize the conference title games - which the P5 covet because they keep all of that money themselves - but an expansion to 8 likely would.