College Football National Playoffs Blowouts

The national title game's going to be an epic match up. Indeed, Clemson and Alabama may very well be the genuine top two teams in the country. But their playoff games certainly didn't force them to test their mettle. What a bunch of blowouts.

From Jon Solomon, at CBS Sports, "College football's New Year's Six bowls continue to disappoint":

.@jillylove I was saying that after yesterday's blowouts. #RoseBowl

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 1, 2016

For the second straight year, college football's New Year's Six bowl games were a total bore. This time, they were also a historic bore.

The six highest-profile bowls -- the Orange and Cotton for the national semifinals, and the Peach, Rose, Fiesta and Sugar -- were decided by an average margin of 24.2 points. That's the widest margin in one season for the biggest bowls during the College Football Playoff and BCS eras. Last year, the first New Year's Snooze -- er, New Year's Six -- games were decided by 18.2 points. That doesn't even count Ohio State's 22-point win over Oregon for the national championship.

Five of the nine most lopsided major bowl games since 2008 have occurred in the first two years of the New Year's Six: Ole Miss 48, Oklahoma State 20; Stanford 45, Iowa 16; Alabama 38, Michigan State 0; TCU 42, Ole Miss 3; Oregon 59, Florida State 20.

These are supposed to be the best bowl games?

ESPN's viewership naturally took a hit. TV ratings for the first New Year's Eve semifinals were a disaster with ratings of 9.9 and 9.7 compared to 15.5 and 15.3 last season on Jan. 1. The CFP was banking on overall higher New Year's Six numbers with the semifinals on New Year's Eve.

"Having the semifinals on New Year's Eve will be a real shot in the arm for those (TV) windows," CFP executive director Bill Hancock predicted last month. "The New Year's Day games are going to do great as always."

On Saturday, ESPN said the 7.1 overnight rating average for the New Year's Six was down 13 percent from last season's 8.2. The network said the four bowls not designated for a semifinal (Peach, Fiesta, Rose and Sugar) averaged a 5.8 overnight rating, up 26 percent from the four bowls that were not semifinals a year earlier.

The Rose Bowl's 7.9 overnight rating for the Stanford-Iowa blowout is the game's lowest on record dating to at least 1983, according to records kept by the Football Bowl Association. The previous low for the Rose was a 9.4 for a tight Stanford-Wisconsin game in 2013...

Bunch of ratings statistics, etc., and then:

Why is this happening? Frankly, a lot of it is cyclical (think of years when the Super Bowl has routs) and the random unpredictability of bowl games after a long layoff. You never know who's motivated, who's injured, who's tired, and who's looking ahead to the NFL. When the CFP Selection Committee revealed these matchups on Dec. 6, some of the New Year's Six games were regarded as fairly attractive pairings.

Keep in mind, some of these matchups are out of the committee's hands. The Sugar Bowl rout saw the SEC's No. 2 team (Ole Miss) beat essentially the Big 12's No. 4 team (Oklahoma State) due to Big 12 tiebreaker rules.

Another factor perhaps impacting the committee: Large conferences with unbalanced divisions and schedules. Look at the Rose Bowl. In hindsight, a Rose Bowl between Stanford and Ohio State could have been outstanding if the committee had ranked the Buckeyes ahead of Iowa.

The Hawkeyes played in the weaker Big Ten division without facing Ohio State, Michigan State and Michigan in the regular season. CFP committee chairman Jeff Long said Iowa finished ahead of Ohio State by proving more in a Big Ten Championship Game loss to Michigan State than the Hawkeyes had shown in their previous body of work up to that date.

The New Year's Six blowouts can also be explained by the thin margin between wins and losses we saw in this regular season...

Still more.

And see Adam Rittenberg, at ESPN, "The six lessons we learned from the New Year's Six bowls."