The BCS took a hammering this year and they have no one to blame but themselves after the matchups they choose this Bowl Season (choosing Illinois to play in the Rose Bowl when they didn’t have to). Only one BCS game out of five turned out to have more viewers than last year, and for the second straight year the Championship game has lost millions of viewers. Via Sports Business Daily….
Last night’s BCS National Championship game, which saw LSU defeat Ohio State 38-24, earned a 14.4/22 final Nielsen rating, down 17.2% from a 17.4/27 for last year’s game, which featured Florida-Ohio State. The game was also down 33.6% from a 21.7/35 in ’06 for ABC’s telecast of the Texas-USC National Championship Game in the Rose Bowl.
We’re talking drops of about 7 million from 2006 to 2007 and approximately about another million from 2007 to 2008. Here’s the rest of the breakdown for the entire set BCS games sans Rose Bowl (+/- based on games played on same date last year, actual Bowl Games may differ)….
National Championship:
2008- LSU-OSU, 14.4/22
2007- Florida-OSU, 17.4/27 -17.2%Rose:
2008- USC-Illinois, 12.0
2007- USC-Michigan, 13.9/23 -13.7%Sugar/Fiesta:
2008- UGA-Hawaii, 7.0/12
2007 (Fiesta)- Boise St.-Oklahoma, 8.4/15 -16.7%Fiesta/Orange:
2008- WVU-Oklahoma, 7.7/13
2007- Louisville-Wake Forest (Orange), 7.0/11 +10.0%
Orange/Sugar:2008- Kansas-VT, 7.4/12
2007- LSU-Notre Dame (Sugar), 9.3/16 -20.4%
I still to this day can’t figure out how Basketball can pull of a Tournament and make a ton of money but Football can’t/couldn’t. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like they’re leaving money on the table under the current format.
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