(10-07-2022 02:23 PM)johnintx Wrote:  

(10-06-2022 11:34 PM)AuzGrams Wrote:  I don’t mind the mix of NFL and some Bowl games.

Me, either. And given the choice between watching the NFL and these particular bowl games, I'll probably watch the NFL. Those games will impact my fantasy teams.

Lower-level bowl games are generally duds for a number of reasons. They have been eclipsed in importance by the CFP/NY6. Coaches are either being fired or replacing fired coaches. Players are skipping the bowl to either prepare for the draft or to hit the transfer portal. More than ever, they are glorified exhibitions.

I don't have a problem with them existing...the players and coaches get a trip, they get extra practices, and cities get to promote themselves for four hours. As long as ESPN is willing to pay for them and the market is willing to bear them, I have no problem with them existing. I just won't plan my December days around watching lower-level bowls.

If my teams are involved, I’ll watch, plain and simple.

The bowls need to do a better job of compelling matchups. I still take bowl season seriously and wish everyone involved would.

(10-07-2022 02:23 PM)johnintx Wrote:  Players are skipping the (lower-level) bowl to either prepare for the draft or to hit the transfer portal. More than ever, they are glorified exhibitions.

Same can be said for the "traditional" bowls desperate to shoehorn themselves into a 12-team playoff

(10-06-2022 03:06 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  Why is the NFL putting more & more games exclusively on NFL Network? I understand they need content, but goodness.

Is this a serious question?


Because having programs people watch in large numbers allows them to charge a larger subscription fee to consumers who want to view the channel.

Also, NFL games are the most watched thing on tv by far, getting 15-25 million viewers. So putting regular season games on there gets some football fans to add the channel to their streaming/cable package.


Adding more games that matter to the NFLN not only increases subscribers, but also increases how much they can charge for said subscription

(10-06-2022 03:18 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(10-06-2022 03:06 PM)Bronco14 Wrote:  Why is the NFL putting more & more games exclusively on NFL Network? I understand they need content, but goodness.

They're putting fewer games on NFL Network. NFL NEtwork used to have the Thursday package. They must have contract guarantees for a certain number of games to keep their spots with the cable carriers.

Yep. It looks like 7 is the minimum.

Look at those 7 games

3 early Sunday AM international games
1 Christmas Eve game
Mid December Saturday Triple Header

They are doing the bare minimum with live game content on NFL Network

No issue really. There is a divergence of viewers between college and NFL. Vast majority of NFL viewers don’t watch college football and a portion of college viewers don’t watch NFL games.

It's happening tomorrow, people!

The Dec. 17 bowls were no match for the NFL.

The top bowl on Dec. 17 was the Las Vegas Bowl on ESPN which had 2.45 million viewers. That's a below average SEC regular season game viewership. The lowest NFL game, the 1pm Indianapolis-Minnesota game, got 7.056M. This year was bad for college football because next Saturday is Christmas Eve and the NFL is playing most of its games instead of Sunday. Next week only one bowl game is on, the Hawaii Bowl. Had ESPN/ABC been able to spread the Dec. 17/24 bowls over two Saturdays they would likely have better ratings.

(12-20-2022 10:48 AM)schmolik Wrote:  The Dec. 17 bowls were no match for the NFL.

The top bowl on Dec. 17 was the Las Vegas Bowl on ESPN which had 2.45 million viewers. That's a below average SEC regular season game viewership. The lowest NFL game, the 1pm Indianapolis-Minnesota game, got 7.056M. This year was bad for college football because next Saturday is Christmas Eve and the NFL is playing most of its games instead of Sunday. Next week only one bowl game is on, the Hawaii Bowl. Had ESPN/ABC been able to spread the Dec. 17/24 bowls over two Saturdays they would likely have better ratings.

The bigger picture is that the first round of the CFP is scheduled for this exact weekend starting in 2024.

Even a bad NFL game on a lower rated network is *stiff* competition. That Colts-Vikings game is likely going to end up being the least-watched NFL game of the year outside of the early Sunday morning international games and it's *still* drawing more than 7 million viewers. (I'm really interested to see how the minute-by-minute ratings of that game were since it went from total awful blowout to the single greatest comeback in NFL history within an hour.) To put that into context, only 13 college football games during the entire season have drawn more than 7 million viewers (with 3 of them being CCGs). It takes a mega-marquee college football matchup on ABC/CBS/Fox to get the ratings of a subpar early afternoon Saturday game on NFL Network.

It's the fault of college football for waiting generations to get a full playoff system into place. The NFL is gobbling up all of the best TV time slots... and they rationally *should* be doing that since nothing else compares to their product on all of television.

(10-10-2022 10:31 AM)MWC Tex Wrote:  No issue really. There is a divergence of viewers between college and NFL. Vast majority of NFL viewers don’t watch college football and a portion of college viewers don’t watch NFL games.

Not really. I'll have to find the data, but from what I've seen is that the overlap between NFL and college football viewers is the greatest among any two sports out there. It would make sense statistically because virtually everyone watches the NFL, which means that if college football is the #2 sport, then its greatest crossover viewership is naturally going to be with the NFL. The fact that a lot of NFL viewers don't watch college football is true, but it's not really true in the reverse in significant numbers (notwithstanding people on the Internet claiming that they "never" watch the NFL).

(10-06-2022 03:22 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-06-2022 03:14 PM)solohawks Wrote:  Its so crazy there is a federal law prohibiting the NFL from national television on Fridays and Saturdays from early/mid September to mid December

To be sure, it was something that the NFL negotiated in the 1960s as a trade-off compromise. At the time, the federal courts ruled that the NFL was in violation of antitrust laws by selling its TV rights as a league instead of allowing each individual team to control its TV rights (like MLB or the NBA). Then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle was *really* scared off this - he thought that selling rights at the league level was necessary for competitive balance or else the large market teams would end up having a huge financial advantage as the use of TVs grew. (That turned out to be exactly correct - see the NFL with its equal TV revenue sharing versus how MLB with each team controlling most of its TV rights turned out over the past 60 years.)

In exchange for Congress granting the NFL a limited antitrust exemption on this broadcasting issue, the NFL agreed to the restrictions on Friday and Saturday games during the high school and college football seasons.

In 1965 the NFL had 14 teams. With only seven games a week and only one network available to them he probably never dreamed they’d have a need to show games on days other than Sunday.

(12-20-2022 12:18 PM)AssKickingChicken Wrote:  

(10-06-2022 03:22 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(10-06-2022 03:14 PM)solohawks Wrote:  Its so crazy there is a federal law prohibiting the NFL from national television on Fridays and Saturdays from early/mid September to mid December

To be sure, it was something that the NFL negotiated in the 1960s as a trade-off compromise. At the time, the federal courts ruled that the NFL was in violation of antitrust laws by selling its TV rights as a league instead of allowing each individual team to control its TV rights (like MLB or the NBA). Then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle was *really* scared off this - he thought that selling rights at the league level was necessary for competitive balance or else the large market teams would end up having a huge financial advantage as the use of TVs grew. (That turned out to be exactly correct - see the NFL with its equal TV revenue sharing versus how MLB with each team controlling most of its TV rights turned out over the past 60 years.)

In exchange for Congress granting the NFL a limited antitrust exemption on this broadcasting issue, the NFL agreed to the restrictions on Friday and Saturday games during the high school and college football seasons.

In 1965 the NFL had 14 teams. With only seven games a week and only one network available to them he probably never dreamed they’d have a need to show games on days other than Sunday.

By the same token, Rozelle probably never dreamed that a random early-season Sunday night NFL game would consistently beat the World Series head-to-head in viewership. That would have been unconscionable in the 1960s (or even up through the 1990s). Over the past few years, the NFL has become very cognizant that it can dominate every single time slot that it desires no matter what the competition might be and they've acted accordingly.