Playoff panel's Long rebukes Saban on bowls

Jeff Long says the playoff hasn’t hurt interest in other bowls. (USATSI)

When asked what he learned from the first season of the College Football Playoff, Nick Saban said this week said “I learned what I feared the most would happen.”

“All the attention, all the interest would be about the four teams in the playoffs,” he said, “which is exactly what happened.”

Saban wasn’t complaining on his Crimson Tide’s behalf; after all, Alabama was one of those four teams in the playoffs. But speaking on Arkansas’s Sports Talk with Bo radio show Friday, College Football Playoff selection committee chair Jeff Long nonetheless made it clear he disagreed with Saban’s assessment — and that someone in Saban’s vocation maybe wasn’t in the best position to comment.

“Well, I think sometimes coaches, particularly those at the highest level, I’m not sure how aware they are of what’s really going on out there in the real world,” Long said, per a transcription by al.com. “You know, bowl games, they keep adding bowl games. And I think the television interest for the games is higher than ever before, so I think that’s not only the College Football Playoff, but as we’ve gone through some of those bowl games.

“So I’m not sure it’s having that effect.”

At the very least, Saban’s suggestion that college football might eventually have to choose between holding playoffs and holding bowl games is a nonstarter, given that — as Long points out — TV ratings for non-playoff bowls were up overall, and that such games continue to be added to the bowl season docket, not removed.

But if the bowls Saban had in mind were specifically the BCS-level games who became part of the New Year’s Six rotation and didn’t host playoff semifinals, he might have a point. According to Sports Media Watch, the four “other” New Year’s Six games — Chick-Fil-A, Fiesta, Orange, and Cotton — each posted a TV rating lower than all but one of the 72 BCS bowls* played during the 15-year BCS era. Maybe the New Mexico Bowl isn’t affected by the playoff … but are we sure that in years when they aren’t hosting a semifinal, the Orange, or Fiesta, or even Rose or Sugar isn’t being diminished?

In the end, one season isn’t enough to make any firm conclusions. (Maybe Mississippi State vs. Georgia Tech didn’t yield much in terms of Orange Bowl ratings, but it was a smash success when compared to previous New Year’s Eve primetime offerings.) The feeling here is that Saban’s concerns are overblown — if that Arizona-Boise State Fiesta Bowl didn’t generate as much interest as, say, an Ohio State-Clemson Orange Bowl, that’s likely more a function of one involving the Wildcats and Broncos and the other the Buckeyes and Tigers than it is the playoff. And at the very least, the obvious positives of the CFP seem to clearly outweigh the relatively minor complaint that some bowls may not carry quite as much weight. (Any remaining BCS defenders: take a moment to compare the Rose-Sugar doubleheader we got to the Alabama-Florida State title game we would have gotten under the BCS, and sit down.)

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t concerns, and if the other four New Year’s Six games grow into complete afterthoughts, Saban may yet still prove to have a point — however “aware” coaches may or may not be.

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