The Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl hit historic viewership lows, while the Gator Bowl scored its top audience in seven years.
Monday’s Penn State-Utah Rose Bowl averaged 10.19 million viewers on ESPN, down 39% from Ohio State-Utah on New Year’s Day last year (16.63M) and easily the smallest audience ever for the game. The previous low was 13.55 million for Stanford-Iowa in 2016. Ratings were not immediately available.
While this year’s game aired on January 2 rather than January 1, that has not typically been a major drag on the numbers. The previous January 2 Rose Bowl in 2017 — USC-Penn State — averaged 15.74 million viewers, actually up from the previous year (the aforementioned Stanford-Iowa game).
Earlier in the day, the Tulane-USC Cotton Bowl averaged just 4.17 million — the smallest audience ever for a New Year’s Six (or Bowl Championship Series) game. The previous low was 5.01 million for the December 2014 Peach Bowl between TCU and Mississippi.
The Green Wave’s win also ranks as the least-watched Cotton Bowl since 2005 (4.02M). While the game has been part of the New Year’s Six since its inception, it was not part of the BCS.
The Cotton Bowl averaged fewer viewers than several non-New Year’s Six bowls, including Friday’s Notre Dame-South Carolina Gator Bowl — which averaged a 3.1 rating and 5.77 million viewers, up 48% in ratings and two-thirds in viewership from last year (Wake Forest-Rutgers: 2.1, 3.48M) and the largest audience for the game since January 2016 (Georgia-Penn State: 5.87M).
The Gator Bowl ranks as the most-watched of the non-New Year’s Six games, topping the previous night’s Florida State-Oklahoma game (5.40M).
Earlier Friday, ESPN averaged a 1.6 and 2.68 million for Maryland-NC State from Charlotte, flat in ratings and up 3% in viewership from last year (South Carolina-North Carolina: 1.6, 2.60M). The Pittsburgh-UCLA Sun Bowl scored a 1.5 and 2.76 million on CBS, down 17% and 3%, respectively.
Facing the Sugar Bowl on Saturday (Alabama-Kansas State: 4.8, 9.14M), the Iowa-Kentucky Music City Bowl drew a 1.7 and 3.0 million on ABC — down sharply from last year, when it aired on ESPN in and faced no such competition (Purdue-Tennessee: 3.1, 5.59M).
Returning to Monday, ESPN2 averaged 2.18 million for Mississippi State-Illinois in Tampa Bay — down 45% from last year on New Year’s Day (Penn State-Arkansas: 3.95M). Viewership was not immediately available for Monday’s fourth bowl game, LSU’s Citrus Bowl rout of Purdue on ABC.
It is disappointing that ESPN treats the Rose Bowl like another small tier bowl game. When NBC and ABC televised the Rose Bowl, they would hype it up and treat it like the Super Bow.
Well for the 300 million plus people that didn’t watch the Cotton Bowl, yall missed out, it was an instant classic!!!
I understand why the average fan wouldn’t be interested. They’re saying “Who is Tulane?” But it’s really strange because the one of the main reasons people watch March Madness is for the upsets and to root for the underdog. Well here you have the classic underdog narrative, long time football powerhouse with the Heisman Trophy winner vs Long time academic powerhouse who hasn’t been consistently good at football. The story writes itself, unless people don’t really want to see underdogs win??
#RollWave
Hi Lance. Congrats to your alma mater/favorite collegiate team (whichever fits the description). You absolutely hit it on point from your 2nd block. As an alum of a G5 school (Troy University), I can absolutely understand where you come from! To be fair though and objective, Boise St was rallied behind when they upset Oklahoma 16 years ago. TCU in 2010 was unfortunately buried by Cam Newton and Auburn that year in terms of headlines and 2017 UCF made a lot of headlines that season yet didn’t receive a CFP bid. Finally though the G5 broke through with Cincy being in the playoffs last year. Tulane didn’t compare to the teams I named which could’ve been an argument why no one wanted to tune in to see them.
College Football is continue to change though. I do believe in a couple of years there will be those rooting for the G5 school in the playoffs like the underdogs is rooted for in March Madness when they’re facing a blueblood, familiar collegiate name, or simply a much higher seed.
Boise State’s win over Oklahoma happened the opposite of what you say. Boise State blew a huge lead over Oklahoma and escaped with a 2-point conversion in OT.
It was a great moment made possible made possible by Tulane’s 1998 team that went 12-0 and was shut out of the BCS, which caused enough controversy that they changed the rules to give AQ schools in similar situations a shot at playing in a BCS bowl.
Cincy was part of the Big East, which was an AQ league in the BCS era, and was never treated like most G5’s by the media. So, their appearance in the playoffs was less an underdog story as it appears on the surface.
Tulane’s “Cinderella” story is one of the greatest of all time in college football. Just the year prior, Tulane only won 2 games. It was 24 years since Tulane won more than eight games in the season, and prior to that you’d have to go back to 1979 to see Tulane with eight or more games in a season, and 83 years since it was invited to a major bowl.
In my 53 years of breathing oxygen on this blue marble falling through these heavens had never played in a major bowl. This is as underdog as you get in college football.
Tulane’s come-from-behind thriller is legendary. It will be remembered as vividly in forty years from now as the famous “Hail Flutie” play in the 1984 game between Boston College and Miami.
By the way, congrats to your Troy team for being the second best G5 team of the season. Much luck to you in the future.
NCAA NIL rules will continue to drive people away.
Paid players should just move into the NFL.
Or leave school.
Playoff semis just hit five year highs less than a week ago.
And the championship game was the lowest rated ever
I suspect the 65-7 score had a heck of a lot more to do with that than NIL rules.
Shocking to see how low the Rose Bowl numbers are. Not surprised at all by the Cotton Bowl numbers, especially when Tulane was playing (a team that was not even part of the College Football narrative during the season). But I never thought in a million years the Rose Bowl would reach a point where it would barely have 10 million viewers. Definitely a few factors attributed to it. Including having the game on January 2, and an unappealing matchup with Utah. But I wonder if having it scheduled right before the NFL Monday Night Football had anything to do with the bad numbers? Especially a big game that had lots of implications. I think this is the first time ever that an NFL game was on the same day as the Rose Bowl. Paulsen, do you think this was a major factor in the historically low Rose Bowl numbers?
I think that’s a possibility. It wasn’t really a ‘college football day’ as New Year’s usually is.
Not sure why the Jan. 2 is an issue. It’s the holiday across the country. People are off of work. Jan. 2 was not an issue ever before.
Here is a promo clip for NYD, wait date falls on Jan.2. Maybe bad promos now by ESPN. Lack of games on that date another factor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt7GMEVkipg