On December 1, there will be a College Football Playoff rankings reveal show on ESPN.
Calls to abolish single editions of it or the entire series have been coming from inside ESPN’s own house for a few years now. Sometimes the complaints are about who is ranked where. Sometimes it’s about how the committee arrives at or explains its decisions.
The conversation was pushed to a new level last December after Notre Dame was leapfrogged in the final poll by a Miami team they were ranked ahead of less than a week earlier. Notre Dame’s defenders cried that it should’ve been impossible for the Canes to jump the Fighting Irish when both were idle during conference championship Saturday.
ESPN was unmoved. Their message to Notre Dame and to the talking heads, even the ones on their own payroll, calling for a change is clear: Your complaints are not our crisis.
The rankings reveal is just another TV show on the ESPN schedule. When you judge it in that way, it’s easy to see why everything stays as-is.
According to The Athletic, about 1.7 million people watched the CFP rankings reveal each Tuesday night. That’s more people than are tuning in on average for mid-week MAC games or early-season NHL, NBA, and college basketball games.
People are only coming to live television for popular sports and breaking news. ESPN has managed to thread that needle with a studio show. It’s breaking news about a very popular sport that happens at a regularly scheduled time each week.
That makes the CFP rankings reveal a valuable property, even if it only lasts six episodes.
The CFP rankings reveal show is also a conversation driver. ESPN shows have been making content out of what happened on other ESPN shows for years now. A controversy about perceived disrespect or the fallout from a shocking loss will be turned into multiple segments for First Take, Get Up, Paul Finebaum, SportsCenter and so many other shows.
College sports, like so much of America, is in a K-shaped economy. The divide between the haves and have-nots is giant. A brand like Notre Dame is used to having its grievances placated. At the very least, they are acknowledged and addressed by the biggest stakeholders in college sports.
That didn’t happen this time.
Of course, ESPN and the College Football Playoff heard what fans were saying. How could they not have? I’m sure executives and hosts were confronted with them every time they logged into social media. But they didn’t act immediately.
They evaluated what they were hearing. There may have been a lot of “I don’t like how you did that,” but there wasn’t a lot they could use as a guide map to overhauling a TV show that ESPN has already paid for and made into a success. At the end of the day, that’s what would be required in order to take action.
Do we need a rankings reveal show? No, but the ratings clearly show that sports fans have made it appointment viewing. They may not always like what they see and hear, but the urgency keeps them coming back.
It doesn’t sound like ESPN and the CFP have a problem. Until they do, it will be business as usual when it comes to revealing the weekly rankings.
About Demetri Ravanos
Demetri Ravanos is a writer and broadcaster living in Raleigh, NC. He is also the host of This Team is Killing Us, a podcast about the Carolina Panthers.