Is the 12-team college football playoff a flop? That’s an open debate considering what you feel about the final matchup between Ohio State and Notre Dame.Of course, it’s a major achievement for Ryan Day and the Buckeyes to take home the coveted National Championship trophy. But as far the numbers indicate, this year’s showdown has paled in comparison to last year’s run between Michigan and Washington. 

The Odd Couple Kelvin Washington and Rob Parker instigated a debate in a new YouTube episode on Fox Sports Radio on January 23. Rob didn’t hold back his opinion as he said, “My overwhelming feeling about the national championship and the college football playoffs, that everybody wanted 12 teams and all that, was that it was a flop.” But besides the lopsided matchups, one of his arguments is that “it felt like it was a day late and a dollar short that it was too late, January 20th seemed very late for college football.” And that’s something even Kelvin agrees to. 

The shift in the matchups propelled by the 12-team playoff prolonged the college football season. With the peak of college football season subsiding and the NFL playoffs taking center stage, most CFB fans moved on. This is one main reason why the Ohio State vs Notre Dame National Championship game couldn’t garner the same amount of viewership like Jim Harbaugh and Michigan did last year on January 8. 

The Ohio State-Notre Dame CFP National championship raked in 22.1 million viewers across the nation. It became the most-watched non-NFL sporting event over the past year. However, it fell 3 million short of what the Michigan-Washington national championship game rounded up last year with 25.1 million views. Also, it was the third-lowest viewership of the 11 CFP title games! 

A deeper look into the title game viewership 

The only title games with lower viewerships than this year’s game are Georgia vs TCU in 2023 (17.2 million) and Alabama vs Ohio State in 2021 (18.7 million.) According to ESPN, the first round of the 12-team playoff drew in an average of 10.6 million viewers, followed by 16.9 million viewers in the quarterfinals. The CFP semifinals garnered 19.2 million viewers, which is a 17% drop from last year when the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Alabama rounded up 27.2 million viewers.

Since the 2018’s CFP National Championship game between Alabama and Georgia, the subsequent seven title games put up an average margin of victory of 25.4 points. In the last title game, the Buckeyes led 31-7 through the third quarter. But Notre Dame came in strong in the fourth before the game ended 34-23 in Ryan Day’s favor. 

While this season’s viewership paled in contrast to Harbaugh’s national championship stint, Ohio State still holds the record with Oregon as the most-watched college football game in the first CFP title game in 2015 with a remarkable 33.9 million viewership.