The furor over the selection process for the first ever college football playoff is just beginning to bubble to the surface now that we’ve reached October. And while we’ve thankfully relegated the BCS to the dustbin of history, there’s still some uncertainty over how exactly the new selection committee will decide the four teams that will contest the first edition of college football’s final four.
With mystery and intrigue abound, get used to college football coaches and programs politicking to get their teams in the discussion by any means necessary. No matter how absurd their theories or criteria may be.
In this first year of the new system, it’s going to be very tough for anyone to beat Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio for the “Furthest Detachment from Reality Award.
Via the Detroit Free Press, here’s Dantonio’s quote from his news conference this week on why Michigan State’s TV ratings will help them get into the playoff:
The drawing power of the Big Ten as an asset in the playoff system: “If we do what we’re supposed to do or what we’re attempting to do and get in the (Big Ten title game) and win that game, then I think good things are possible. I think we turn on a lot of TV sets, and let’s not be naïve. It’s about who is watching the game, too. And so you’ve got a quarter of the country watching a football game. They want to see a football team from this part of the country in that game.”
Now let’s come back to reality where people don’t walk on their hands and hamburgers don’t eat people.
First of all, if television ratings are an actual factor in the selection process, then we might as well just give up on college football being an actual sport. It would then be no less scripted than professional wrestling with Nick Saban playing the role of John Cena. That simply cannot happen.
Second of all, Dantonio has built an excellent program at Michigan State, where they are seeing their best run of success since the days of Duffy Daugherty. But to say the Spartans are a top television draw is as delusional as saying these are glory days for the Big Ten on the gridiron.
Good Bull Hunting ranked teams by average television viewership in the 2013 season. Michigan State ranked 23rd on the list. Not only were they behind the likes of Ole Miss and Mississippi State before their renaissance this year, they were behind six other teams in their own conference! Even Northwestern drew better ratings in 2013 than Sparty did! Northwestern!
A truer test of Michigan State’s ability to “turn on TV sets” comes when they play a non-Power Five team and theoretically provide most of the television draw. When Sparty hosted Wyoming two weeks ago, the game drew 803,000 viewers at noon on ESPN2. It was the 11th most watched game of the day according to the Sports Media Watch database. The week prior, Bowling Green-Wisconsin drew 856,000.
Now while it might be true that the recent home game with Nebraska won the night in primetime for ABC with 4.47 million viewers, that would be just the fourth highest viewership total in six weeks for the network’s primetime package.
There are far better reasons to argue for Michigan State’s inclusion than television ratings, so perhaps Dantonio should stick to arguing what his team does well on the field.
