Alabama head coach Nick Saban noted previously that he isn't a huge fan of the College Football Playoffs, and numbers support his assessment of whether the four-team playoff is taking fans away from bowl games or not.
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College Football Playoff chairperson Jeff Long responded to those thoughts, via AL.com:
"Well, I think sometimes coaches, particularly those at the highest level, I'm not sure how aware they are of what's really going on out there in the real world," Long said. "You know, bowl games, they keep adding bowl games. And I think the television interest for the games is higher than ever before, so I think that's not only the College Football Playoff, but as we've gone through some of those bowl games. So I'm not sure it's having that effect."
It's fine to believe what you want, but choosing to ignore numbers doesn't seem like the best option. We brought these numbers back in February, via sportsmediawatch.com:
"Ohio State-Alabama did a 15.2 rating, with 28.27 million viewers; Oregon-Florida State did a 14.8, with 28.16 million viewers and Ohio State-Oregon did an 18.6, with 34.15 million viewers.
Out of the other 36 bowl games, only seven drew more than six million viewers (not including the CFP games), none had more than nine millions viewers and just four had a rating of 4.0 or higher.
In 2013, nine bowl games had more than six million viewers, including five in the double-digits. Eight bowl games also had a rating over 4.0."
With two years of evidence under our belts after this season, it will be interesting to see where we stand with regards to interest in the CFP and individual bowl games.
