Are we having fun yet?
Ratings are what drives TV money, but what if we measured consumption by enjoyment instead? It would turn college football's power dynamic on its head.
Brent Venables seemed to get under the skin of his former conference, the Big 12, this week when he suggested the SEC was a “one score league” in which teams were evenly matched, rather than the Big 12’s routine blowout wins for Oklahoma.
The Big 12 has a point, but also no one should be arguing the SEC isn’t the toughest league top to bottom. It is. It’s annoying, yes, but still true.
But the conversation did get me thinking about “one score leagues” and the notion of what makes for a good football game.
People tune in to a college football game for all sorts of reasons — because they went to one of the schools, because the schools are highly ranked, because there are a bunch of future NFL prospects on the field, etc. And because the Big Ten and the SEC have the largest alumni bases — and by extension, the largest fan bases — as well as a bunch of stars, they get high ratings.
But that’s not what I’m interested in here. I want to know what creates a positive experience while watching a college football game. Did you enjoy watching it?
I’d argue the average person wants two things in a game, regardless of who’s playing: Points and drama.
Offense sells tickets, as we all know, so more scoring is typically more enjoyable (though there’s probably a diminishing return at a certain level when the scoring is a result of poor quality of defensive play). But a 70-14 game has a lot of points without being particularly enjoyable, so we also want the games to be close, for there to be late drama.
You can argue with this premise, but I think it’s broadly true.
So, what league is the most entertaining product?
I dug into the numbers for the 2024-25 seasons and the answer was pretty resounding….
Of course, nothing can go on Twitter without someone requiring more context, as The Athletic’s Matt Baker did with this.
So, I dug deeper. I went back through the entire playoff era and looked at the percentage of conference games played that were decided by one possession, the average number of points scored in conference games, and the average margin in conference games.
If you’re curious about all the numbers, you can find them HERE.
But some top-line takeaways:
Number of seasons (2014-2024/25)1 in which each league had the highest % of close games:2
ACC - 4.5
B12 - 4.5
P12 - 1
SEC - 1
Had the closest average margin:
ACC - 6
P12 - 2
B12 - 2
SEC - 1
Had the most points scored:
B12 - 8
ACC - 2
P12 - 1
Now, if we look at the trend lines, the Big 12 has lost some of its wild, Wild West luster in favor of the ACC, and, of course, RIP Pac-12 (and even more so, Pac-12 After Dark).
But the bigger point is that, consistently, the SEC and Big Ten — the two most expensive leagues for TV networks to broadcast — produce the worst games in terms of entertainment.
Ohio State fans get angry because so many of their games are early kicks for FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff. The reason is, so few other Big Ten teams are any fun to watch!3
The Big Ten’s numbers are downright gross. In the playoff era, the Big Ten has the lowest average points scored per conference game (50.65 points), fewest close games (35.7%) and largest average margin (17.5 points). So, more often than not, if you’re watching a B1G game — it’s a one-sided, low-scoring affair.
Say what you will about a BC-Stanford matchup on the CW, but you’re far more likely to be entertained by the action than you are by, say, Wisconsin-Northwestern,4 if you don’t have a stake in the game.
A BRIEF ASIDE: Let’s talk for a moment about Steve Belichick. I’ve heard often that he can’t be part of the issue at Carolina because he did a nice job improving Washington’s defense last year. But… Washington also moved from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten, which averaged a TD less per game. Washington’s offense moved slower under new coach Jedd Fisch than it had the year prior under Kalen DeBoer, the defense ran 37% fewer plays, and how about the list of QBs the Huskies faced in those two seasons…
The combined Total QBR of 2023’s opposing QBs vs. everyone but Washington was 74.7 and a 68.9 vs. the Huskies — good for a 7.8% relative improvement.
The combined Total QBR of 2024’s opposing QBs vs. everyone but Washington was 67.0 and a 63.7 vs. the Huskies — good for a 4.9% relative improvement.
The same holds for scoring and other stats. Washington’s D got better because opposing offenses got worse. That’s not to suggest Belichick didn’t do a nice job, particularly given the departures from the 2023 Pac-12 champion roster, but let’s put things into the proper context.
OK, BACK TO OUR MAIN TOPIC…
I’m sure that even if about 20 million people read this newsletter and agreed that it makes intuitive sense and said they would seek out the games that were the most fun more frequently, it still wouldn’t change TV ratings much at all. The fact is, people like the teams they like and they gravitate to big brands, even if the drama is frequently not there.5
But I also think there’s a lesson here that the ACC, in particular, could learn. Instead of trying to shove buzzy themes (“Conference of QBs!”) or nice-sounding slogans (“ACComplish greatness”) or put really, really good looking people on their network (hi!), it should lean into a thing that is actually the league’s strength: The ACC is fun!
Stop trying to convince people the ACC can be as good as the SEC. Stop trying to capture an audience the size of the Big Ten’s alumni base when you have half your conference made up of smaller, private schools. Embrace the fun!
It’s OK to say, “We’re not churning out first rounders like the SEC, but when you’re done watching Kadyn Proctor bulldoze some hapless kid at Vandy, flip over to a game that’s likely to be closer, higher scoring and a hell of a lot more fun.
Thank you for attending my TED Talk.
Hey, what happened to Inside ACCess?
Did you notice something was missing this week? Please say yes.
We had to skip this week’s Inside ACCess due to some unforeseen production issues, but Andrea and I didn’t skip TV entirely.
We joined ACCPM to deliver our midseason All-ACC team.
We’ll be back on ACCN next week with Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert and the great Jeff Cameron, who’ll help us dig into what’s happening at Florida State.
And, as always, please subscribe to the podcast version!
What’s David wearing?
I was in Durham this week to interview Duke QB Darian Mensah for a feature that will run tomorrow on The Huddle. As I was getting ready to depart, I threw a suit into my suitcase and my 6-year-old asked if I was planning to wear a tie.
Obviously, I was not thrilled but I do as I’m told.
Anyway, one of the fun nuggets I learned about Mensah is that he’s got personalized handshakes with tons of folks in the building, including every member of the equipment staff. So, me being the idiot that I am, I asked him if we, too, could have our own handshake.6
Darian was kind enough to oblige.
“You’ve got a good tie on,” he said, “so we’ll use that.”
Lock hands, raise, lower, shake, straighten tie, voila.
So, the lesson here: Always listen to your kids. They know what’s up.
What else is David doing?
I was foreman for our midseason Top 25 player rank committee for ESPN, and here’s what we came up with. If you disagree, blame Bill Connelly.
I also joined Anthony Pagnotta from Heel Tough Blog to talk Bill Belichick.
What’s David reading?
My pal Ken Sugiura wrote a good piece on Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key, and how he’s delivered the eyeballs on the program Geoff Collins long sought by doing things completely the opposite way.
I’m not sure I entirely love the premise of this Derek Thompson piece comparing what’s happening now to the next iteration of TV, but I see where he’s going with it, and that place is really dark.
There’s a ton to chew on in his piece, and I think it leads to lots more scary questions, but his takeaway stands as a warning.
When literally everything becomes television, what disappears is not something so broad as intelligence (although that seems to be going, too) but something harder to put into words, and even harder to prove the value of. It’s something like inwardness. The capacity for solitude, for sustained attention, for meaning that penetrates inward rather than swipes away at the tip of a finger: These virtues feel out of step with a world where every medium is the same medium and everything in life converges to the value system of the same thing, which is television.
We’ve traded a lot for the ability to stare at our phones and watch an endless loop of utter, meaningless garbage often not even real or created by real people. We’re not in the attention economy, in my mind, because that would require engaging one’s attention. Instead, what’s mostly happening is the stealing of attention. What’s being sold is not entertainment or creativity or information. It’s pharmaceutical. It’s a drug that numbs us to the real world, a little more each day.
And on that note, here’s an even more depressing interview with Tristan Harris from The Daily Show that’s absolutely worth watching on the future of AI and the complete lack of anything approaching a plan for what projects to be a bleak future.
Week 8 ACC picks
Andrea, Li’l AA and I all had the same picks last week, so no movement in the standings. Here are our picks for Week 8.
Since we’re only halfway through the year, and since I already had the math done, I just combined 2024 and 2025.
ACC and Big 12 tied in 2022.
No offense, Indiana. You’ve changed the game of late.
Yes, there are people who will argue they enjoy a nice defensive battle — though how many of those Big Ten games are elite Ds going toe-to-toe vs. just trash offenses playing, slow, plodding football?
While CFB schools and leagues spend so much time crowing about how bad everyone else is and hyping their biggest brands, it’s funny how an NFL game between Green Bay and Minnesota — two small markets — can fetch a huge nationwide audience. Because the NFL is selling the game, not the teams.
Mensah: “Well, I don’t know. Will you be here a lot?” Me: “If you keep winning, yes.”