The potential, if not inevitable, expansion of the College Football Playoff will have consequences. One of those consequences could be the Heisman Trophy ceremony.<\/p>\n
Ben Portnoy of Sports Business Journal explores the dynamics<\/a> arising from the possibility that more postseason games will undermine, if not eliminate, the traditional Saturday night event in December.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, it\u2019s the Heisman Trophy,\u201d 2001 winner Eric Crouch told Portnoy. \u201cIt\u2019s obviously one of the most sought after awards in all of sports. It\u2019s very prestigious. It\u2019s been held in a high regard and the standard\u2019s been set high and none of us want to see that go away. . . .<\/p>\n \u201cThe fear is that the players will say, \u2018Oh, I can\u2019t make it. I\u2019m just going to accept my award in the living room of my apartment.\u2019 We don\u2019t want that.\u201d<\/p>\n The potential for involuntary change comes at a time when the Heisman ceremony is undergoing voluntary changes. <\/p>\n Heisman Trophy Trust CEO Jeff Price told Portnoy that the annual ceremony will expand to Friday night, with a Heisman Live event consisting of a fireside chat featuring the four finalists. On Saturday night, the award show will add a red-carpet show along with an effort to make it look and feel like the Oscars for college football.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of bringing the four finalists together and whether that\u2019s in New York or in another location, is certainly something that we can work through,\u201d Price told Portnoy. \u201cBut for 90 years, that visit to New York and the ability to bring the winners together has made the Heisman what it is today.\u201d<\/p>\n What it becomes depends on what the CFP will be. At the end of the day, the numbers will control the outcome. And the Heisman ceremony\u2019s numbers don\u2019t compare to the audience attracted by a high-stakes college football game.<\/p>\n Last year, the Heisman Trophy ceremony attracted 4.3 million viewers<\/a>, the highest average audience since 2012. The eleven 2025 CFP games averaged 16.3 million viewers<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bottom line? Postseason games are better for the bottom line than the ceremony that hands out the ultimate postseason award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The potential, if not inevitable, expansion of the College Football Playoff will have consequences. One of those consequences…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-667694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}