Georgia’s annihilation of TCU leads to the lowest ratings in college football history

Fans apparently didn’t feel like watching most of Monday’s College Football Playoff title game between Georgia and TCU, and it’s hard to blame them.

the A 65-7 powerhouse showing of Georgia en route to their second straight national championship drew 17.223 million viewers just for the ESPN family of channels, According to Austin Karp of Business Sports. This number is said to make the Bulldogs’ victory in a college football game the least watched since the inception of the BCS in 1999.

The ESPN broadcast’s main broadcast reportedly averaged 16.6 million viewers, though the “Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show,” in which the former NFL player and some of his friends watched and interacted with the game from the field, was a relative success. 423,000 viewers.

Georgia won the CFP title in the second quarter

Most stories about the record low ratings for a sporting event will lead to some soul-searching about the future of the sport, but there is nothing really complicated about what happened on Monday.

Georgia was A massive favourite (Unbalanced matches are usually detrimental to ratings) and continued to hit TCU in the face for the next 60 minutes. The Bulldogs outscored the Frogs 589-188, winning by a 3-0 trading margin and having the quarterback for the entire fourth quarter. It was the largest margin of victory in the history of not only the College Football Playoff but also of all bowl games.

As such, it’s hard to blame the non-Georgian fans for stopping the game early. TCU entered the contest with a reputation built on magical comebacks, but there isn’t much room for drama when the score is 38-7 at halftime.

The bright side of the College Football Playoff vs ESPN is that this season’s semifinal thrillers have done well in the ratings department, such as the Fiesta Bowl (21.7 million viewers) and the Peach Bowl (22.4 million). It was the most watched semi-final in five yearsdespite it being on New Year’s Eve.