Why Were The National Championship Ratings So Bad?

Image: Nick Posey

By Cody McClure

The National Championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame did big ratings numbers.

Kinda.

ESPN announced yesterday that 22.1 million people watched it, so that sounds pretty good.

They also noted that it was the most-viewed non-NFL sporting event over the past year.

Ok … Good.

It peaked at 26.1 million viewers and “more than half of people 18-49 watching TV were tuned into the game.”

Yes … all sounds very good.

The only problem is, this year’s game was outperformed by last year’s.

Last year’s championship game between Michigan and Washington drew 25 million viewers. That was a 45 percent increase from the previous year.

And last year’s game … I mean yeah, Michigan is a big brand. But Washington isn’t huge.

This is Notre Dame and Ohio State we’re talking about here. Maybe the two BIGGEST brands in college football.

And yet it got outdone comfortably by Michigan and Washington.

Therefore, personally, I conclude that this year’s ratings were BAD not GOOD. They should have been much higher.

Why did this happen?

For one, I suppose you could blame the inauguration, as people may have generally been more tuned in politically.

It was also MLK Day, so with a holiday, maybe people had long weekend plans that extended into Monday.

Maybe everyone just thought Ohio State was going to blow Notre Dame out of the water and it wouldn’t be worth watching.

By the way, Ohio State should just replace those little green buckeye leaves on the helmets with little green dollar signs for that Yankees/Dodgers roster they signed.

Maybe people were just “footballed out” fresh off a weekend of NFL divisional round action — but I doubt that one.

My opinion is that in addition to those other reasons, people down south may have not been all that interested.

The casual football fan, the SEC-first fan, who may be more intrigued by the Georgia’s and Alabama’s of the country, perhaps didn’t care so much about these Midwesterners going at it.

I had at least a couple friends who said they didn’t watch a minute of it, and that surprised me.