With J Hutcherson -- For those of you no longer enamored with the wider world of American sports, the college bowl season is throwing up some very high viewer numbers. Somewhat surprising, considering the game that will decide the championship has yet to be played.
What this version of the bowl season has figured out is that the games draw better if they're not lumped together. In other words, there's something to be said for exclusivity.
That's becoming increasingly rare for professional soccer, club and country variants. With three full-time soccer channels, they need enough games to fill their slots. It's enough of a churn to get past the bright lights of Europe fairly quickly, not to mention what's available in the United States.
Very rarely does one game get enough of the stage to make it their show. The glut of games pushes down the audience for say, one available English Premier League game on a Saturday morning rather than five or six.
For all the American diehards that must see their Euro club week in and week out, the end result is about what you would expect. The big names can push the ratings to over 200,000 viewers, while the rest end up in that same ratings purgatory as MLS regular season games.
There's an exception. Thursday nights on ESPN2 did fairly well last year, all things considered. They put up numbers in the same conversation as what a big EPL game can get on Fox Soccer Channel or Setanta. What that means isn't as much a statement of the League's growing popularity because the ratings are right back down two days later for the national Saturday night game on FSC.
Instead, it's the same thing the bowl season is showing. Give a game an exclusive time slot where no other option in the same sport is breathing down its allegorical neck, and the ratings will improve.
At least that's the idea.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
