Ratings for Fiesta Bowl Are Solid, but Not Great

Under the new bowl coalition format that crowned a clear-cut national champion, more people were expected to watch the 1999 Fiesta Bowl title game. That didn’t happen.

Tennessee’s national championship victory in the Fiesta Bowl was watched in more than 17 million homes, for a 17.2 national rating. Even though two games had national title implications last year, the Rose Bowl still managed a higher rating (17.6).

The 1998 Rose Bowl featured Michigan winning a thriller over Washington State while the Orange Bowl pitted Nebraska against Tennessee and grabbed a 13.3 rating.

The Wolverines and Cornhuskers finished the season with a share of the national championship.

Monday’s contest was a yawner for much of the game, until the final minutes when Florida State cut the deficit to seven points.

“I expected the Fiesta Bowl would do a pretty good number, but I thought it would be better than that,” said ABC analyst Todd Blackledge, who worked the Fiesta Bowl on Monday night. “One of the factors may have been that both teams were from the southeast, so it was kind of a regional game.”

Under the new format, the bowl championship series comprises four bowl games--Fiesta, Rose, Orange and Sugar.

The remaining three bowls actually fared better than last season’s No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 games.

What was even more impressive was that it was done without top draws Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State.

“The BCS has had a positive impact on TV ratings,” ABC spokesman Mark Mandel said. “But the bigger picture of all of this is that it crowned a national champion.”

This season’s Rose Bowl, a shootout won by Wisconsin over UCLA, posted a 13.6 rating, which was 2% higher than the 1998 Orange Bowl.

The 1999 Sugar Bowl, in which Ohio State won easily over Texas A&M;, had an 11.5 rating--an increase of 3% from last year’s game between Ohio State and Florida State.

The Orange Bowl this year was the lowest-rated of the BCS bowls, an 8.4 rating.