LOVERRO: Sanders, Saban and college football’s lust for ratings

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s college football.

The AFLAC boys, Nick Saban and Deion Sanders, did all right by themselves this college football season and had a little fun to boot, introducing everyone to the “Gap Goat” — the goat used in their television commercials to symbolize the gap between health insurance coverage and health care bills.

The “Gap Goat” in college football is between those who deserve and those who deliver.

Sanders and Saban deliver the currency of college football — viewers, eyeballs, the attention that goes beyond the athletic field and achievements deserving of recognition.

Sanders delivered that currency this year, his first as coach at the University of Colorado, with a prime-time focus on entertainment. At the start of the season, all eyes were on the former NFL great as he transformed a Colorado team that had been a bottom-feeding program into a juggernaut — when it came to TV ratings, at least.

Colorado was featured in four of the top seven most-watched games in college football in September, according to Sportico, with an average draw of 8.83 million viewers across Fox, ESPN and ABC. That was 10 times more than they drew the year before.

Colorado opened the season with a dramatic 45-42 win over last year’s national championship contender, TCU, and would go on to win their next two games with a high-powered offense that was the talk of college football. Everyone wanted a piece of Sanders. He was featured on 60 Minutes. He was an ESPN god.

And then Sanders and Colorado would win just one more, losing six in a row to close the season 4-8.

For that, Sports Illustrated named Sanders its “Sportsperson of the Year.”

Here’s how the magazine justified picking the coach of a 4-8 team for the once-prestigious (there is little about Sports Illustrated that is prestigious these days) award:

“There are numbers that help define the Prime Effect on college football: The previously irrelevant Buffs had the most-watched game of the season through the first 11 weeks, as 10.03 million viewers tuned in for the Sept. 23 loss to Oregon. In fact, Colorado has had five of the 13 most-watched games; Alabama had three of the top 13 to that point, while Ohio State, Texas, Penn State and LSU each had two. So, yes, the numbers are huge and paint a vivid portrait of renewal—but they don’t fully explain why Sanders is our 2023 Sportsperson of the Year. The human stories run deeper, and not just the celebrities and athletes flocking to the sidelines of games, but also the grassroots stories as the Prime Effect transcends sports and ripples outward through the culture.”

Quack, quack, baby.

Sanders’ AFLAC commercial partner, Saban, has been the face of college football for years, with his seven national championships, six at Alabama. His teams are perennial contenders for the national championship title, though for most of this season, it looked like Saban and Alabama might finally miss the cut.

After all, there were four more deserving teams: undefeated Michigan, Washington and Florida State, along with a one-loss Texas team that had beaten Alabama.

But 13-0 Florida State, a team that won the ACC championship, ended up getting bumped out of the College Football Playoff to make room for 12-1 Alabama, the SEC champion.

Florida State became the first undefeated Power 5 conference champion to be left out of the final four — supposedly because it lost its starting quarterback, Jordan Travis, who suffered a broken leg in a Nov. 18 game against North Alabama. Despite that, Florida State still won its final two games against Florida and Louisville and proved it was worthy of being included in the championship round.

Too bad. “Florida State is a different team than they were through the first 11 weeks,” College Football Playoff Committee Chairman Boo Corrigan told ESPN. “An incredible season. But as you look at who they are as a team, right now, without Jordan Travis, without the offensive dynamic that he brings to it, they are a different team.”

But Florida State had gone from an incredible season to an incredible story — you know, like Sanders and his Colorado team for three games this year. They would be challenged to play for the national championship without their star quarterback. That’s the kind of story that should define college football.

Instead, what defines college football in 2023 is a duck. AFLAC is among the top advertisers in the sport. They sponsor the annual college football Kickoff Game on the opening weekend of the season.

Florida State coach Mike Norvell may do some local Jimbo car sales commercials in Tallahassee, but he’s no Nick Saban.

“I am disgusted and infuriated with the committee’s decision to have what was earned on the field taken away because a small group of people decided they knew better than the results of the games,” Norvell said. “What is the point of playing games? … What is the motivation to schedule challenging nonconference games?

“What happened goes against everything that is true and right in college football.”

What is true in college football today is what sells and not necessarily what is achieved and accomplished. It is an ugly duck.

You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.