College Football 2013 Season

[Imran Siddiqui]

As we just saw, a single-elimination playoff, by its nature, only shows which team is better on that day.

Indeed.

[-Jrabbit]

This isn't an isolated incident. The Giants alone have a history of this.

If by "history" you mean "once," sure.

I'm curious: Were you this outraged when the Packers won last year?

The wild card system was begun in 1970. So that's 42 years. In that time, a total of 10 wild card teams have reached the Super Bowl. Six won. As it happens, 3 of those were in the past 6 years (Packers, Giants, Steelers). Sign of parity? Trend or anomaly? Hard to say.

FWIW, you really do sound for all the world like a disgruntled Packers fan.

[Tupac Shakur]

I'm curious: Were you this outraged when the Packers won last year?

Outraged? No. I'm not outraged now, either. Uninterested? Yes. I didn't watch the Super Bowl last year. I don't remember watching a Super Bowl since the Giants spoiled a Patriots season for the ages in 2008. I'm not going to waste my time watching a sport that fails to reward sustained excellence or punish mediocrity.

[-Jrabbit]

You'd rather watch one that rewards the best sustained excellence in recruiting high school kids?

[Ming]

While the Super Bowl continues strong...
The BCS continues to go downhill...

NEW ORLEANS -- Alabama loved a rematch. Not so much of the rest of the country.

It turns out most television viewers didn't want to see Alabama-LSU again, at least not an uncompetitive rematch.

Final ratings for Alabama's 21-0 victory over LSU were the third lowest for a national championship in the 14-year history of the BCS. The All-SEC affair, the first championship pairing teams from the same conference, drew a 14.0 rating on ESPN. The lowest ratings were a 13.7 for USC-Oklahoma in 2005 and a 13.8 for Miami-Nebraska. [Note: Updated with final ratings after initial overnight ratings.]

To put last night's rating in perspective, Alabama-LSU on Nov. 5 drew an 11.5 on CBS. Last night's game was down 8 percent from Auburn's three-point victory over Oregon last year. It was also down from Alabama's last national championship when the Crimson Tide defeated Texas in 2010.

Alabama-LSU capped a disappointing ratings year for the BCS on ESPN. The five BCS games averaged 8.4% of all TV households, down 12 percent from last year.

The Rose, Orange, Sugar and BCS Championship all took ratings hits this season. West Virginia's 70-33 rout of Clemson at the Orange Bowl drew just a 4.5 rating, making it the lowest-rated game in BCS history.

The overnight rating for Alabama-LSU drew the lowest rated for a BCS Championship Game. But last night's game escaped that distinction after all of the markets were reported.

Interestingly, the three lowest overnight ratings for the BCS Championship Game occurred in a year when there was some controversy over the participating teams. The previous low (14.3), in 2002, featured Nebraska, which didn't win its conference. LSU's win over Oklahoma in 2004 featured a Sooners team that didn't win its conference.

Last night, Alabama became the first school since Minnesota in 1936 to win a national title without winning its conference. Alabama fans are understandably rejoicing.

Much of the rest of the country apparently tuned out.

So much for the BCS... They continue to hurt the sport.

[Guynemer]

The only people who deny that is the BCS itself.

[Tupac Shakur]

No one here is denying the unappealing nature of this year's BCS title game matchup, as far as I can tell. Rematches have no place in college football, and a game at the end of the season shouldn't count more than a game at the start of the season. College football generally isn't like the NFL, where the regular season doesn't matter once the playoff starts, but this year's BCS title game was another disheartening step in that direction.

[Tupac Shakur]

Manti

[Ming]

The regular season in college football is pretty meaningless unless you play for the right conference... it's not the team that matters, only the conference.

[SlowwHand]

You mean like SEC and Big 12? You're right.

[Tupac Shakur]

The regular season in college football is pretty meaningless unless you play for the right conference... it's not the team that matters, only the conference.

Tell that to Boise State, who was a missed field goal away from playing in the national title game this year despite playing in a non-AQ conference. You should also talk to TCU, who won the Rose Bowl last year.

[-Jrabbit]

Wait, so the Giants beating the Packers invalidates the entire NFL playoff system, but you're actually going to quote "nearly got a fair shot" examples of how the BCS *almost* works?

The Boise States of the world ONLY get their shot by the grace of a failure of the "traditional power" teams above them. NEVER are they starting out from the advantaged position of the traditional powers. Only in college football can teams go undefeated and not get so much as a sniff at the championship.

[Ming]

Yeah... he whines about the NFL, but in College, one loss teams that actually won their conference didn't get a crack at playing for the championship, and a team the didn't even win their conference got a chance. At least in the NFL, if you win your conference, you get a crack at it... far more meaningful than the crappy system in place in College...

[Guynemer]

Tell that to Boise State, who was a missed field goal away from playing in the national title game this year despite playing in a non-AQ conference. You should also talk to TCU, who won the Rose Bowl last year.

You really think the coaches would've had Boise at #2 ahead of Alabama?

That makes one of us.

[rah]

Well at least it's nice to see that the falling ratings have them talking about alternatives. (including playoffs)

But I finally heard one argument against a playoffs that actually made sense. Not enough to make me dismiss playoffs of course

The argument was that multiple bowl games for a school would be a hardship on students that go to the bowls. It's already expensive to go to one bowl game. Going to two would be prohibitive.