Through sheer arrogance or avarice, the College Football Playoff system has decided that sacrificing the semi final games for "tradition" is a good idea.
This year the penultimate games of the college football season dropped like a rock, losing almost 40% of last year's audience -- and ESPN can thank former SEC commissioner Mike Slive for a large part of the audience loss, one that could happen 2 out of every 3 years.
Last season the two semi-final contests averaged over 28 million viewers each, setting a cable record that would be broken by the Ohio State-Oregon National Championship contest a week later (33 million viewers).