Now hype, and a long wait
GLENDALE, Ariz. — The matchup is set for a tantalizing College Football Playoff national championship .
On one side, defending champ Clemson, with its 29game winning streak. On the other, unbeaten and No. 1ranked LSU, with its recordsetting offense and Heisman Trophy winner.
But first, we interrupt this playoff for a 15-day break that is far from ideal.
LSU and Clemson will play the final game of the 2019 college football season Jan. 13 at Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans after winning semifinals Saturday night at the Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl, respectively.
Heisman winner Joe Burrow and his Tigers routed No. 4 Oklahoma, 63-28, in Atlanta. Clemson’s No. 3 Tigers beat No. 2 Ohio State, 29-23, in a thriller in Glendale, Ariz.
“The challenge is keeping the conversation in the forefront against two weeks of NFL,” said Nick Dawson, ESPN’s vice president of programming and acquisitions.
Fans seemed to be into the semifinals. ESPN announced Sunday that Clemson-Ohio State drew an average of 21.2 million viewers, up 9% from last year’s late semifinal game and the most for a nonNew Year’s Day semifinal in the six-year history of the playoff. Even with LSU taking all the suspense out of the first game of the doubleheader before halftime, the two games combined to bring in an average of 19.285 million viewers, up 6% from a year ago.
Once complete streaming numbers are available, these semifinals should surpass the largest audience for playoff games not played on Jan. 1, ESPN said.
ESPN will try to keep the college football conversation going with lower-level bowl games scheduled for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday.
The LendingTree Bowl in Mobile, Ala., matching Louisiana-Lafayette and Miami of Ohio essentially will be a three-hour promo for LSUClemson.
“We launch with a championship game spot on Monday and have really two weeks to run it and really sell the matchup,” Dawson said. “We think that could be an advantage for us.”
ESPN also will have the final three episodes of “Inside the College Football Playoff” available on its subscription online streaming service, ESPN+. The behind-thescenes-with-the-teams series now will follow Clemson’s and LSU’s title game preparation.
The CFP schedule did not end up here by design. It was a correction.
When the College Football Playoff was crafted by the Football Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners in 2012 and 2013, they decided the semifinals would be played Dec. 31 two out of every three years. The semifinals would rotate through six bowl games and when they were played at the Rose and Sugar bowls, as they will next season, the games would be Jan. 1.
That’s the perfect spot — a national holiday when most people are off from work, being couch potatoes after ringing in the New Year.
But the conferences that partner with the Rose (Pac12 and Big Ten) and Sugar (Southeastern and Big 12) bowls chose to lock their showcase games into those Jan. 1 time slots for the 12year duration of the playoff. Even when they weren’t playing host to semifinals.
That led to the ill-fated idea to reinvent New Year’s Eve as a night to watch college football. It did not work and after one season the plan was scrapped. Future schedules in which the semifinals were planned to be played Dec. 31 were moved to the closest Saturday, unless New Year’s Eve was a Saturday.
This year’s schedule became particularly problematic because while the semifinals could be moved up to Dec. 28, the championship could not be moved from Jan. 13.
CFP officials have said the Superdome in New Orleans was not able to accommodate the switch, which would have provided a more normal eight-day lead-up.
So instead, the teams have more than two weeks between games, and two rounds of NFL playoffs will be played in the meantime.