College Football Playoff commissioners to consider releasing fewer rankings, which likely won’t please ESPN

By Matt Bonesteel March 9 at 1:01 PM

(Associated Press)

For the most part, the inaugural College Football Playoff was a smashing success, both in terms of fan interest — TV ratings were through the roof for ESPN — and the actual product on the field. But if there was one criticism, it was over the necessity of the weekly rankings, especially after TCU dropped from No. 3 in the penultimate rankings to No. 6 and out of the playoffs in the final tally.

The conference commissioners who run the playoff seem to be coming around to the fact that releasing weekly rankings might actually be detrimental, with some telling ESPN.com’s Heather Dinich that they’ll look at reducing the number of rankings when they meet next month:

The majority of commissioners said the only significant change in 2015 should be fewer than the seven weekly rankings. When the rankings were initially discussed, it was proposed they would be released every other week.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said he would ask the group to consider “a poll midseason, a poll at Week 9, and a poll that’s at the end” to avoid “the abrupt fluctuations you sometimes had this year.”

Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said he would suggest maybe three or four rankings and possibly having them every other week in November before the final ranking in December.

“That’s really the only change I would hope we have a conversation about in April,” Thompson said. “We don’t need seven. I know ESPN likes seven. It’s great ratings, but there’s other ways you get around it. It’s good information because all week you can argue back and forth … so it’s all good for the sport. But they don’t mean anything, quite honestly.”

And that’s where any talk of reducing the number of rankings probably dies. ESPN’s weekly rankings reveal garnered pretty good TV ratings, about as good as the network’s lowest-rated bowl games and an improvement over the network’s BCS ratings reveal of years past. And ESPN, it probably should be mentioned, is paying a metric ton of money for the playoff and all that it entails: about $5.4 billion over 12 years. Does anyone honestly think ESPN is going to give up a weekly show that gets good ratings and likely is quite cheap to produce? Not a chance.

Unless, I dunno, maybe the network can negotiate a trade of sorts. In exchange for fewer rankings, the playoff agrees to move the semifinals to Jan. 2 instead of New Year’s Eve, which everyone agrees is a dumb, momentum-killing idea. Problem solved.

After spending the first 17 years of his Post career writing and editing, Matt and the printed paper had an amicable divorce in 2014. He's now blogging and editing for the Early Lead and the Post's other Web-based products.