Why are there no New Year’s Day bowl games this year?
When the regular season of college football comes to an end there will be 45 bowl games over 10 days for your viewing pleasure. However, on New Year’s Day you are officially on your own.
American Football. It’s one of the greatest sports ever created. It gives you a reason to scream, cheer and most of all something to look forward to every week.
Now what’s better than that?
Well, one thing does comes to mind. College football. There’s no paycheck or money-hungry general managers, just good old bragging rights. Two teams, a boatload of pride and in most cases, 100,000 screaming fans. The sport satisfies all your needs from September until the beginning of January.
This season, there are 45 bowl games on the schedule from Saturday, December 17 to Monday, January 9. However, something is different this year. Amidst all the bowl action, there will be no college football bowl games played on New Year’s Day.
The college football playoffs will start on New Year’s Eve as planned. Then the schedule will be clear on New Year’s day, but will resume on January 2. This year, New Year’s day falls on a Sunday. Having bowl games and NFL action air at the same time would create a conflict. The goal is to increase ratings, not to make viewers choose between the two sports.
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The schedule change was sparked by a drop in ratings from last year. The ratings of college football dropped by up to 40 percent due to late games competing with New Year’s Eve programming. For that reason, both playoff games will be aired one hour earlier. This way people can still enjoy their favorite sport, and take part in the New Year’s Eve programming.
The hope is that ratings will increase as a result of the change. When it comes to drawing in viewers, you just can’t compete with holiday programming. The same could be said for Sunday NFL action. Seeing another drop in ratings would be disastrous.
Don’t worry college football fans, there’s good news fore the future. Next year, there will be plenty of regularly scheduled bowl games on New Year’s Day, and college football will reign supreme once again.