BCS to fail on FOX? Yes.

The Sugar Bowl between Notre Dame and LSU finished with a 9.3 rating, well below the 12.9 rating for the 2006 Fiesta Bowl (which featured Notre Dame and Ohio State). The game was only up slightly from last year’s Sugar Bowl between West Virginia and Georgia, which scored a 9.0 rating.

At this point, “the four traditional BCS games produced 38.6 ratings points, down from 55.8 last year, a decline of 31 percent. That means to break even in five games with what four games produced last year, the championship game between Florida and Ohio State will have to produce a 17.2 rating.”

Considering how badly the other BCS bowls have done, a rating higher than 16 seems out of the question for OSU/Florida, which may get lost in the shuffle thanks to NFL playoff games and a five day break between bowls. The average ratings for the four BCS games so far is 9.6, lower than the average for the World Series and just above the average for the NBA Finals.

Why have the ratings fallen so far? Media Life Magazine writer Toni Fitzgerald predicted that the ratings would fall in a November article; her reasoning was that fans would be turned off by yet another BCS controversy. However, there hasn’t been very much in the way of outcry about Michigan being left out — that is, compared to the outcry in 2003 (when #1 ranked USC was left out) and 2004 (when an undefeated Auburn was left out). Even if there was a controversy, it still wouldn’t account for the ratings drop in the other bowls.

The biggest reason is the lack of big names this year. Boise State, Louisville and Wake Forest are not schools that the casual fan has either heard of or associates with good football. The low ratings for the Fiesta Bowl and Orange Bowl were not surprising; upsets and Cinderella stories do capture national attention, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into good ratings. One need only look at the ratings for George Mason’s run in the NCAA Tournament; the numbers weren’t terrible, but they were down from the previous year. Or, one could look at the run of the Detroit Tigers, who participated in the lowest rated World Series ever. The BCS was far better off last year, when the bowls featured Florida State, Penn State and Texas in addition to USC, Ohio State and Notre Dame.

Everything now hinges on Monday night for FOX. If the National Championship game scores a 16 or higher rating, then 2007 will go down as a decent year for the BCS. A more realistic rating, anywhere from 13 to 15, means that 2007 will end up as a relative failure — especially considering how strong the ratings were for college football in the regular season.