LEADING OFF - 12 Lessons Learned from the College Football Season

Welcome to the first edition of The A Block, Awful Announcing’s new daily sports media newsletter. We’ll be in your inboxes Monday-Friday each week with exclusive commentary and a recap of all the day’s events in the sports media world that you need to know. At least we’ve already made it further than Venu Sports, may it rest in peace.

The 2024 college football season concluded on Monday night with Ohio State claiming a national championship victory over Notre Dame. The win completed a remarkable turnaround for a Buckeyes program that seemed completely lost just over a month ago after a shock loss to Michigan.

So in honor of the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff, here are 12 lessons learned from a college football campaign unlike any other.

1. The expanded playoff is a winner: Purists may have an issue with celebrating a two-loss OSU team as a national champion given they lost their fourth game in a row to their rival and didn’t even compete for a conference championship. But this is a new, NFL-like era for the sport. After Ohio State defeated four Top 10 teams on the way to the title in the playoff (including #2, 3, and 4 in the final AP Poll), nobody can say they didn’t deserve it.

2. The regular season still matters…: The expanded playoff came with fears that the regular season would be diluted. While there is some merit to every game not having a do-or-die nature, the fact is ratings only increased throughout the season and even for non-descript bowl games. If anything, the ability for more teams to make the postseason proved the exact opposite and gave the regular season more juice.

3. …Conference championship games don’t: Not everything was perfect for the CFP this year. The most obvious fix for the CFP revolves around not giving the top four conference winners byes and doing something about a conference championship weekend that saw teams that lost get better draws than teams that won. Conference title games are money-makers, but they may need to be sacrificed for the greater good.

4. Stop the madness: ESPN has simply got to ditch the weekly CFP rankings show. However much content it creates, the toxicity and negativity it creates is a huge drag on the sport. Thankfully ESPN changed their tone during the playoff after a dismal first weekend and finally remembered that people can actually like watching games instead of just debating narratives like cable news.

5. Less is more: The person often at the center of criticism for ESPN this year was lead analyst Kirk Herbstreit. From his ups and downs with Ohio State fans to his harsh criticism of Indiana, Herbstreit’s presence was way more stressful than it should have been for someone as good on the air as he is. It would be wise for ESPN and Herbstreit for him to take a step back and focus on calling games so that he doesn’t have to bear the entire weight of the sport on his shoulders.

6. Hail Saban: The former Alabama coach was a natural in his first season on College GameDay and excelled in his new analyst role. We just can’t wait for his next showdown with Shane Gillis.

7. GameDay gains - Speaking of College GameDay, the pre-eminent pregame show set new viewership records this season, growing the gap once again between themselves and Big Noon Kickoff. The formula they found this year with Saban, Pat McAfee, and guests and features was the perfect mix.

8. Big Noon’s big dilemma - Fans revolted against Big Noon Saturday this year, especially with so many crucial Big Ten matchups airing early in the day week after week. But Fox is still stubbornly committed to the idea so it looks like the uneasy relationship with Fox and college football fans will continue.

9. Big Ten balance of power - With Fox holding the cards for Big Noon and the Big Ten, the conference’s other partners in CBS and NBC were left with underwhelming schedules considering the strength and depth of the league. Outside of the Oregon-Ohio State game in primetime on NBC, it was hard to find a must-see game on their calendar all year. Both networks will be hoping that changes drastically in 2025.

10. The SEC on ABC is a powerhouse: The SEC may have lost its position as the dominant force on the field to the Big Ten, but there’s no denying the strength of its television product. The new fully exclusive ESPN-SEC deal was a monster success for both sides.

11. The Coach Prime Effect - While Deion Sanders may not have won Sports Illustrated’s Sports Person of the Year this year, his Colorado Buffaloes were way more impressive on the field in year two in Boulder. Even if it didn’t reach the hysteria that we saw early last fall, Colorado is still a major TV draw… as long as Deion doesn’t go to Dallas.

12. Bristol’s big win - After the first year of the expanded playoff, ESPN has to be celebrating the fact that they won the exclusive rights to the event. Even with sub-licensing a couple of games to TNT, ESPN owned the entire month. Given the SEC-Big Ten Power 2 split with ESPN and Fox-NBC-CBS on opposite sides throughout the season, it was a stroke of genius by Bristol to outmaneuver their competition and basically make them a non-factor come playoff time. Don’t tell Jimmy Pitaro, but there’s a reason why they are still called the worldwide leader in sports.

AROUND AA - CFP Edition

🤔 ESPN aired a message from newly inaugurated President Donald Trump during the National Championship Game which brought us back into a “stick to sports” debate.

😖 USA Today columnist Dan Wolken detailed “bizarre scenes” in the Notre Dame locker room after the Fighting Irish lost to Ohio State in the National Championship Game that he called “amateur hour.”

😡 Fox’s Joel Klatt was not a fan of the Monday night scheduling of the National Championship Game coming the day after the NFL Divisional playoffs weekend. But is there really anything the CFP can do about it?

✌️ Sean McDonough offered an olive branch to Indiana fans after his critical commentary about the Hoosiers in their opening-round loss to Notre Dame aged poorly.

CHANNEL SURFING

🏈 It was a mixed bag of ratings news for the NFL over the course of the Divisional Round. [Sports Media Watch]

⚾ Ichiro Suzuki is the latest baseball legend to fall one vote short of being a unanimous selection for the Baseball Hall of Fame. The witch hunt search to find the perpetrator who did not vote for Ichiro is already underway. [Seattle Times]

🥊 Netflix saw a huge increase in 19 million new Q4 subscriptions thanks to the addition of WWE Raw, the NFL on Christmas, and the Tyson-Paul fight. It was the largest for the company for one quarter on record. Naturally, Netflix is using the opportunity to raise prices. [Deadline]

🎧 Bill Simmons looks set to stick around at The Ringer and parent company Spotify according to a report from Semafor’s Ben Smith. [Semafor]

THE CLOSER - Justin Thomas sends a message

The golf world is in a very weird, very strange place at the moment. The TGL golf simulator league from Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy has gotten off to a surprisingly strong start to the season on ESPN. LIV Golf has signed a surprising new television deal with Fox Sports, granting the upstart Saudi league a lifeline after an uninspiring run at The CW. And all the while, the PGA Tour seems to be swimming upstream trying to fight against the current that is tearing professional golf apart.

The players of the PGA Tour are finally sensing the urgency of the moment.

Gabby Herzig at The Athletic obtained a memo from Justin Thomas to his fellow players about their need to buy in to change golf broadcasts on television because televised golf “can feel a little distant.”

Thomas’ letter centers on the need for players to open up and provide more access to their network partners at CBS and NBC. This could include players being mic’d up during shots and caddie discussions to pre-round and mid-round interviews beyond the recently implemented walk and talks. He also notes that the biggest factor in drawing in younger fans is “on-course personality,” which outside of Tiger, Arnie, and Phil has never been the sport’s strong suit.

Golf has a lot of issues in trying to make its sport more TV-friendly. In a day and age where other sports are trying to speed up the game, PGA Tour golf is slower than ever. The players are often inaccessible and difficult to connect with. Broadcast innovations to make the telecasts more interesting and interactive have been slow to develop.

But at least top pros like Justin Thomas know that something positive has to be done. The PGA Tour doesn’t have to go full TGL or LIV in the manufactured entertainment department, but these certainly seem like reasonable suggestions and ideas that the players should get on board with if they want their sport to stop falling further and further behind.

Now if he can only do something about the commercials.