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College Football's Ratings Slide Raises Questions About CFP Expansion

The move to 24 teams in the Playoff appears to be coinciding with a massive drop in viewership.
Joe Cox|
The growth of the College Football Playoff might continue a negative trend.
The growth of the College Football Playoff might continue a negative trend. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

With the all-but-finished expansion of the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, there are many questions arising. But the most direct might be-- is it too much? While the stated aim of giving more teams a shot at the championship and the unstated aim or more games, more money both are substantial, a drop in college football viewership says that more games may just be giving fans more that they don't especially want.

Bad News on Viewership

Counting games through the end of October, Front Office Sports determined that there's an 11% drop in TV viewership from the games from the first nine weeks of 2025. With FBS games drawing an average of just 1.6 million viewers, it's fair to wonder how a 24-team Playoff will further impact viewership.

Potential Troubles Ahead with Playoff Expansion

It's not hard to imagine that regular-season viewership will decline. Already, with a 12-team Playoff a second loss is very much possible and even a third loss doesn't eliminate a team from College Football Playoff consideration. That already creates a very different fan experience than the two-team BCS title situation or even the four-team CFP format. While every game theoretically matters, in reality they don't. And with a 24-team Playoff, forget 9-3 teams making the Playoff, the stage is set for 8-4 teams to make the Playoff.

Shifting focus to the weeks in the stretch run of the NFL sesason doesn't seem great for competition either for college football. The bowl run, while not followed as closely as it used to be (again, due to the top 12 teams rather than two or four missing out on the regular bowls) helped college football be sprinkled throughout the holidays in December and January.

Of course, there's already been speculation that in a world where the top 24 teams are in the Playoff, will literally anyone watch bowl games. Does a Rose Bowl matter if it pits a 7-5 team against a 6-6 team?

Meanwhile, conference championship games are a likely casualty of the 24-team Playoff, and those games were another week of solid viewership. See, for instance, Georgia vs. Alabama for the SEC title seems like a more viewer-friendly week than watching a 9-3 team play an 8-4 team for the right to potentially play Georgia or Alabama in two weeks.

Of course, at the end of the day, money calls the tune. But as ESPN's recent interactions with Major League Baseball proved, when a committment gets more expensive to a network than beneficial, the broadcasting won't be the plum it used to be. Could college football be headed on that same path?

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Joe Cox
JOE COX

Joe is a journalist and writer who covers college and professional sports. He has written or co-written over a dozen sports books, including several regional best sellers. His last book, A Fine Team Man, is about Jackie Robinson and the lives he changed. Joe has been a guest on MLB Network, the Paul Finebaum show and numerous other television and radio shows. He has been inside MLB dugouts, covered bowl games and conference tournaments with Saturday Down South and still loves telling the stories of sports past and present.

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