With title-game ticket prices plummeting more than 90 percent, should college football be worried?
“Prices are trending lower than we have ever seen before,” SeatGeek.com’s Chris Leyden told Yahoo Sports. “Demand is down.”
And that’s just part of it. The semifinal games weren’t competitive and delivered comparatively low television ratings.
Unbeaten 2018 champion Alabama vs. unbeaten 2017 champion Clemson. It’s their fourth consecutive playoff encounter, third in the title game.
“This is clearly the two best teams,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. “I mean, this is the way it should be.”
And yet, in what may be the ultimate embarrassment, the game could be played in front of empty seats at Levi Stadium.
That isn’t the way it should be.
No, it is not the way it should be and yes, the conservators of the game should be worried.
The bowl system is cannibalizing game. So many bowls that followers get inured. Attendance was down, sometimes drastically, at five or six bowl games that I noted in a previous post.
And weirdly, the playoff has decreased competitiveness, not increased it. Where are the the upsets like in the NCAA basketball tournament that generate so much interest? "#4 Oklahoma stuns Alabama." Doesn't happen. "Boise State stuns Oklahoma." There has never been a game like that in the playoffs (Truth, though:There has never been a game like that.) Instead we get Alabama-Clemson every damn year. It's not competitive, it's predictable. So yeah, there are going to be empty seats at the national championship game. Yes, be worried. Be very worried.
