If you watched the Rose Bowl college football game on New Year’s Day, you saw a dandy NCAA semi-final matchup between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Georgia Bulldogs. The two teams thrilled us with an exciting 54-48 double-overtime game ultimately won by Georgia.
The game kicked-off at 4PM SwampSwami time and ended well after 8PM. And that was BEFORE the overtime began!
How does a college football game last over four hours? Simple. It’s all about the money!
In 2012, ESPN cut a 12-year deal (gasp!) with the NCAA to pay $470 million annually for the rights to televise the college football playoffs (including the national championship game). With a total of six college bowl games to televise each season, ESPN is spending an average of $78 million per contest.
Wow, that sounds a little excessive, doesn’t it? Consider this. ESPN has charged advertisers over $1.2 million per thirty second spot in BCS championship games during recent years. A few years ago, a source reported that the average college football game (then only three hours on average) was comprised of 70% football and 30% commercial time. In a three-hour game, 30% works out to 54 minutes (or 108 thirty second spots). At $1.2 million per spot, that provides ESPN with nearly $130 million for the championship game.
Ever think about what happens when the referees head to the instant replay booth? Yep, ESPN rings the cash register! Do you think that ESPN (or any television network, for that matter) will ever want to eliminate instant replays to speed-up the game? No way!
“Uh-oh. It looks like a player was injured on the play. We’ll be right back to check on the injured player…” (right after we add another $4.8 or, better yet, $7.2 million to pay for this game).
Ever wonder what has happened to the length of time-outs? How did a one minute time-out become two minutes, then three, and, yes, even four minutes?
I timed the commercial break between the third and fourth quarter in yesterday’s Rose Bowl game. Four minutes. That’s $9.6 million for DIS, thankyouverymuch!
For all the barbs I have taken at the NFL (more to come!), the halftime for an NFL game was smartly reduced to 12 minutes to keep the games closer to three hours in length to help keep the viewers watching.
For college football, though, halftime lasts a minimum of twenty minutes (sometimes longer if by mutual agreement). If you wondered what the networks do with those extra eight (or more) minutes, simply take a look at the cash register.
Speaking of halftimes, I would much prefer to watch a hard working college marching band perform than see three, four, or even five people crammed at a table telling me what I just saw in the first half. Please, networks, save your money. Get rid of the halftime zoo of analysts and bring back the college bands during halftime!
The BCS championship game will be played in Atlanta on Monday, January 8, 2018 at 8PM Eastern/7PM Central. It will be LOUD with the home state Georgia Bulldogs playing against their football-crazed neighbors to the west in Alabama. These are two great SEC teams competing for the national title. Let’s get ready to rumble!
And when the clock hits :00 (probably about four hours later), take a sleepy look at your clock and remember how long this game just took. E$PN thanks you!