ESPN’s broadcast of the College Football semifinal matchup between Alabama and Michigan at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena was exhausting. Not because of the game itself. Because of the commercials.
A three-point game going into the fourth quarter was ruined by the absurd number of breaks. There were so, so many.
The NCAA made significant changes to the clock prior to the 2023/24 college football season. Perhaps most notably, the clock no longer stops on first downs until there is less than two minutes remaining in either half.
All of the changes were intended to speed up the game. And they worked! The pace of play increased.
However, for every second that came off of the game length, not even one single second was removed from the advertisements. An equal number of commercials air during games today as before.
So not only is there less actual on-field game time, there are the same amount of breaks. It’s excruciating.
To make matters worse, ESPN decided to re-implement an advertising strategy that it had largely eradicated during the regular season to the Rose Bowl broadcast. The ‘Worldwide Leader In Sports’ went to commercial after every scoring play. They returned for the kickoff.
And then they went back to commercial. Boooooooooooooo!
It started to feel like every minute of the College Football Playoff Semifinal game was parlayed with two minutes of commercials. Turnover on downs? Commercial. Punt? Commercial. Fumble? Commercial. Timeout? Commercial. Injury? Commercial? Sneeze? Commercial.
Fans were fed up!
ESPN got crushed for its Rose Bowl ad time on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“ESPN brought back the commercial-kickoff-commercial sequence for the New Year’s Six games and it stinks,” said Yahoo Sports College Football.
“What sucks is they changed the clock rules—which I thought was a negative—to shorten the game, and appease the networks. But if anything, the amount of commercials has increased since, meaning they’re filling the time freed up by adding ads, not getting in and out quicker,” said Albert Breer.
“The commercial load is crazy bad right now. 2 mins of game, 5 min commercials. #RoseBowl Can we fix plz ESPN,” wrote Mitchell Stevens.
“So far the winner of the Rose Bowl is ESPN for commercial sales,” cracked Christopher Schemanske.
“Rose Bowl? no, commercial bowl? yes,” chimed Lashley Gabriel.
“With these commercials, ESPN actually thinks they’re the story,” added Dave La Torre.
“I’m absolutely sick of these commercials, why do we need so many,” asked Liam Rooney.
“Hey Rose Bowl on ESPN! Too many commercials,” thought Martha Zoller.
“Feels like there are more commercials than football,” said Mike Rabin.
“My gf has been sitting by me the entire game and literally just says ‘has this been all commercials?’ When someone who’s halfway paying attention notices, you know it’s bad,’ chirped Ian Lite.
The quips did not stop there. The complaints were endless.
And they were right!
ESPN’s Rose Bowl broadcast nearly became unwatchable due to the lack of football. If the game itself wasn’t so awesome, the amount of advertisements that aired throughout the evening would have been grounds to turn it off.
Maybe, just maybe, ESPN will listen to its viewers? Probably not…