Why Are ESPN and ABC Ruining New Year's Day Bowl Game Ratings?

Larry Burton (Syndicated Writer) Somebody way up the ladder in the corporation that owns ESPN and ABC television needs to be fired.

On one of the most important days of the year for not just SEC fans, but college football fans as a whole, ABC and ESPN, who are both owned by the same company, scheduled three great football games to be shown at the same time.

Both the Capital One Bowl game, pitting Alabama and Michigan State and the Outback Bowl with Florida taking on Penn State start at 1:00pm.

To add insult to injury, the Gator Bowl with Mississippi State and Michigan starts at 1:30.

Is someone mad?

Ratings for Oklahoma-Connecticut wouldn't be much lower if they had put one of the SEC games against it. That bowl is going to be a snoozer.

Why not put the Gator Bowl on at 10:00 am, the Outback Bowl at 1:00 and the Capital One Bowl at 4:00?

It doesn't take a degree in marketing to figure out that they're slashing their ratings by making their own telecasts compete like that against each other?

These are all games that a few dozen million people and I would like to watch, but now we can't. At least not with the degree of attention we would if they were separated.

Considering that they're all SEC vs. Big Ten schools—the two most competitive conferences this season—with such a wide national appeal hitting big media markets, this is certainly a waste of allocating your resources.

Would you as a potential ad buyer wanting to target the football market want to buy an ad for 2:00 for one of those games at full price?

Not when you know that they've cut your target audience by two thirds with this scheduling mess.

And don't buy that they didn't have any say in it. That just won't fly.

So for Christmas this year, I'm putting getting a new man in charge of scheduling for next year.