Can there be too much football on TV?

That’s one potential explanation for the downward trend in NFL playoffs and the dip in the audience of the college football national championship.

Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, Monday night’s Ohio State-Notre Dame game dropped by 12 percent over last year’s game between Michigan and Washington.

The total audience for the 2024 title game was 22.1 million, down from 25 million for the 2023 championship.

The expanded college championship resulted in five straight days of postseason action from Thursday, January 9 to Monday, January 13. The total audience for the NFL’s Wild Card round dropped by 9.5 percent.

Then came a three-day playoff weekend, with two NFL divisional-round games on Saturday, two on Sunday, and the college championship on Monday night. The NFL’s audience dropped by 8.5 percent over last year.

For years, the college football champion was resolved on or about New Year’s Day. Then came a four-team playoff. Now, with a 12-team tournament, there are more college playoff games that bump up against NFL playoff games.

And the numbers suggest that, for some, more is less.