In 2024, 22.6 million people played the ESPN Tournament Challenge during the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament. That’s more engagement than the viewership of any college football game in 2024, including the College Football Playoff. The Tournament Challenge app is the second-highest downloaded sports app during the NCAA Basketball Tournament (according to the Apple App Store). ESPN does not even have the right to the tournament. Now, imagine what the four-letter network could do with an app dedicated to filling out a bracket, prize money, picking games, and more during the CFP.
College football is the most popular sport in the United States, behind only the National Football League. Football is king. So, why not drive rating and engagement on more than just Saturdays and television screens? The college football audience is rabid enough to engage in games, talk shows, podcasts, print media, and sports betting. Why not increase the footprint by creating brackets, stacking schedules, and expanding the field?
Why College Football Needs Brackets and More
BracketMania
Filling out a bracket is a rite of passage in mid-March in America. Whether sports fans or not, Americans engage highly in paper and electronic brackets. Office pools and group texts drive engagement of bracket challenges hosted by many outlets. What is the most essential function of every bracket? The person who filled it out wants to be correct. So, they watch games to see how accurate their picks are. Spoiler alert: The outcomes of the games are the same whether we watch the games or not, but we don’t tell sports fans that. Seeing the magic happen is different than reading a box score.
A College Football Playoff style bracket would tap into a new audience that the sport has not yet achieved. The goal of the CFP should be to rival the Super Bowl. While it is unlikely any TV event will ever catch up to the ultimate NFL event, the engagement in the CFP can get close. Although the college structure continues to look more like the pros, there is something special about college ball that appeals to its niche fanbase. College Football can increase engagement without losing the twinkle in the eye of the college sports fan by selling the excitement of the bracket.
The Madness of College Football
Another feature of the NCAA College Basketball tournament, affectionately called “March Madness,” is the wild finishes and upsets that often occur in a tournament setting. While the CFP features “playoff” in the title, not “tournament,” the excitement should still exist. The opening weekend of March Madness feels like a holiday. There are four straight days of nonstop basketball. Games overlap, so fans never get a moment to come down from the high of the last buzzer beater. College football cannot feature 64 teams in one weekend tournament, but it can schedule the CFP to mirror the madness of March by emulating the Week 1, Labor Day scheduling model.
To open the college football season in 2025, games will begin on Thursday, August 28. Heavy-hitting matchups like LSU at Clemson, Texas at Ohio State, and Notre Dame at Miami populate an action-packed schedule that spans through Monday, September 1. One problem: Opening weekend of college football does not have to compete with the NFL, and the CFP goes directly against it. Schedulers need to work with the NFL to stack college and professional games in a way that allows football fans of both varieties to watch full days of seamless and meaningful football. This partnership will elevate the viewership of the NFL and the CFP collectively and produce new fans in future seasons.
Expansion Helps College Football and Beyond
Finally, to create a thoroughly engaging bracket that engages fans and drives up viewership and popularity, the CFP needs to expand to 16 teams. Expansion is already on the docket to capitalize on popularity and make additional money. Fourteen teams is an inevitable number, with a 16-team format soon to follow. However, expanding the field appeals to more than network executives and existing college football fans. The fringe fans, partygoers, family goers, and frequent gamblers also benefit from a 16-team playoff. More football means a more seamless schedule and an easy-to-understand college football bracket that does not require a tutorial video from Rece Davis tagged onto every commercial break.
Anti-expansionists say that more teams in the CFP reduce its value, water down the regular season, and raise issues surrounding player safety. But the truth is more football increases value by putting more eyes on the sport. It also gives way to more marketing opportunities for additional programs and players, thus engaging personally with more fanbases. The regular season is improved by highlighting matchups between two three-loss teams late in the season as a pseudo-elimination game. The awareness and precautions taken surrounding player safety have never been higher. The NFL has spent over 250 million dollars in the last decade on player safety. They still feel good about Super Bowl teams playing (potentially) 21 games.
College Football vs. College Basketball
The overall fanbase of college basketball drastically increases at tournament time. The engagement of the sport through the regular season is not great. Yet fans nationally are not harping on what needs to change in the current structure of the sport. On the contrary, college football carries a massive fanbase and media coverage base through the regular season and into the CFP. College basketball features more transient players via the transfer portal than college football. But the sport with the most engagement features every fan and talking head ranting about needed changes. What creates this discrepancy? Passion. College football fans are more bought in than any other fanbase. So, take the good from other systems and continue building dominance over the greatest sport. Give us a college football bracket.
Main Image: Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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