No league dominates American sports like the NFL. That’s led to other leagues, down to college football, doing their best to avoid competing with the massive league, but college football analyst Paul Finebaum is ready for that to change.
College football is rapidly leaving Thanksgiving Day. The Egg Bowl is now going to be on Black Friday, moving off Thanksgiving Day. Then, the Lone Star Showdown is going to be moved back to Black Friday for the first time since 2007. Those are changes that Finebaum wants to push back against, as he explained on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning.
“I wish they would,” Finebaum said. “Because, frankly, I really like the Ole Miss–[Mississippi] State game, the Egg Bowl, on Thanksgiving night. Before that, you had [Texas] A&M and Texas for a couple of years, or even A&M and LSU. To me, you can’t get hung up on the NFL because the NFL has shown that it will follow you no matter where you go, whether it’s Thanksgiving night, whether it’s Friday afternoon on Black Friday, whether it’s against the CFP.”
The NFL has games on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday most weeks. Now, they’re also making a push to take the afternoon of Black Friday as well. That comes as the NFL battles regulations that come from the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. In it, the NFL had antitrust immunity withdrawn on a telecast within 75 miles of a college or high school football game within 75 miles from Friday at 6:00 PM through all day Saturday.
That’s effective between the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December. Its design was to protect attendance at those college and high school games.
“That, to me, is one of the flaws of the system,” Finebaum said. “That somehow, somewhere down the road, back in the past, we allowed Roger Goodell to just overrun everything. I don’t think he could have been stopped, but I think Goodell is savvy enough he could have given a little bit back, and now it’s too late. He’s not only in attack college football, the biggest thing that Goodell has done with the NFL is Christmas Day. That was always only the NBA, and we have two Christmas Day games now on Netflix. I think it’s too late. So, I just think college football ought to go where they want to go.”
Part of why Finebaum thinks college football should take on the NFL is that he doesn’t necessarily believe that they’re drawing from the same viewership pools. His belief is that part of why the NFL’s pool is so large is that they draw nationally, and college football fans tend to be more regional. So, those regional fans will still watch a good college game.
“Ultimately, the NFL pool is significantly larger. Primarily because of the cities. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago. Those aren’t always the biggest college football towns, although maybe Chicago is a little bit better. But a college audience, as you guys know, has a set, finite audience. Whether a 3:30 game draws one crowd. The primetime game draws another. I don’t think it really matters. If you put the right game on, people are going to watch because there’s nothing else on a holiday night. I mean, how many times can you watch the same movie now that it’s available 24/7? So, I just think college football ought to quit getting hung up on it,” Finebaum said.
“There’s nothing that can be done now, and just put your best product wherever you feel it should go. There is enough audience. I think we saw that last year. Even on the first round of the CFP, the Friday night game that you did. The Saturday games against the NFL didn’t do as well, but they were poor games put in those windows. If you had put the Tennessee–Ohio State game on at noon, I promise you it would have gotten a big number.”
In the opening round of the College Football Playoff, college football did take on the NFL and had four games that ranged in viewership from 6.4 million to 14.3 million. None of those games were close by the final whistle, and the two games with viewership below 10 million were on TNT compared to ESPN.
That same Saturday was after the second Saturday in December, meaning the NFL had multiple games there. Those games drew 15.5 million viewers compared to the 6.4 million viewership game between Penn State and SMU, and 15.4 million viewers compared to the Texas–Clemson game, which had 8.6 million viewers.
“I think it was, and I think that was one reason why ESPN outsourced that,” Finebaum said. “Because they probably knew they would have two subpar games. Ultimately, what you raised is an important issue. I don’t know exactly where college football commissioners are right now, but quit trying to be television producers. I know ESPN cares about stuff like that and ABC and all the other networks, but a good game is going to draw. College football is unique. It is not the NFL.”
Taking on the NFL is never going to be easy to do, and viewership does matter to the networks that are paying for the rights to broadcast college games. Still, if the NFL is going to consume every other sport regardless, then Finebaum may have a point about leaving games where you want them to be.
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