Continuing their debate from last week about the increase in holiday programming of NFL and college football, Michael Wilbon joined The Tony Kornheiser Show on Christmas Eve and made his case for why Americans can never have enough football.

On Pardon the Interruption heading into the first weekend of the first 12-team College Football Playoff, it was Kornheiser who ridiculed college football for encroaching on the NFL’s typical late-December Saturday territory. The elder sportswriter’s instincts proved true as some combination of blowout games, a split between ESPN and TNT, and competing against a marquee NFL doubleheader left the CFP with mediocre viewership.

Discussing the weekend slate in their podcast follow-up, Wilbon pushed back on the idea that football can ever cannibalize itself, even if fans sometimes have to pick between college and pro. The reason? Well, to use the PTI partners’ lingo: “Overall” sports fans who can get carried to a game by fun narratives or big stakes are gone for good.

“There are no more overall sports fans. People follow one thing, that’s all they have bandwidth for,” Wilbon argued on The Tony Kornheiser Show.

“They follow maybe a couple [teams], or maybe they follow all football … but they’re not sports fans. You talk to people now, in each town, there are sports fans who will follow all the teams in their place. But not like we grew up … they’re not that discerning. They want to wave the No. 1 foam finger, drink some beer, and watch football. That’s what America does. So that’s why our bosses (at ESPN) and the football people can get together and put anything on.”

The NFL predictably beat college football on Saturday. Both games drew more than 15 million average viewers, while the CFP topped out at just over 14.3 million for ESPN’s nightcap of Tennessee at Ohio State. Maybe Kornheiser was onto something when he dragged the CFP for trying to take on the mighty NFL.

Yet Michael Wilbon is probably the most correct here.

If we compare the two bodies head to head, the NFL will always win. Bigger picture, football won. Throughout Saturday, more than 20 million people were watching football at a time.

Compare that with viewership for basketball, baseball, hockey, or anything else, and you quickly understand the broader context Wilbon is emphasizing.

The grizzled ESPN host may come off as just a grouch, but he is reading the room. A big college or pro basketball game, a marquee hockey clash — right now it feels as if nothing is going to break through against football.

[The Tony Kornheiser Show]