COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Viewership for the College Football Playoff has bounced back a bit, with both New Year’s Eve semifinals drawing a bigger television than the games last season. There were still far fewer people watching the semis than when they were played on New Year’s Day two seasons ago.
ESPN said Sunday that the Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl together drew a total live audience of 19.728 million and an 11.0 overnight TV rating. According to the network, the total viewers increased by 14 percent from last season and the average overnight TV rating was up 11 percent from last season’s semifinals, which were played on a Thursday.
Alabama’s 24-7 Peach Bowl victory against Washington, drew an 11.5 overnight rating for ESPN and ESPN2 and 19.814 total viewers, including those who streamed the game online. The total audience increased 24 percent compared to last season’s early semifinal, Oklahoma-Clemson.
Clemson’s 31-0 win over Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl had a total live audience of 19.646 million and got a 10.5 overnight rating. The audience increased 4 percent from the late time slot last season, when Alabama shut out Michigan State.
NFL
Two NFL coaches were fired Sunday with San Francisco letting Chip Kelly go and San Diego getting rid of Mike McCoy. Add to that Gary Kubiak and now six coaches already won’t return next year. The Jaguars (Gus Bradley), Rams (Jeff Fisher) and Bills (Rex Ryan) already had let their coaches go before the last game of the season.
On Sunday, while other franchises were scrambling to make the playoffs or improve their postseason standing, the coaching carousel spun wildly in California. With Fisher already canned in Los Angeles, Kelly and McCoy became unemployed within an hour of each other.
Both of Sunday’s moves were predictable, as was the release of Trent Baalke, whose success as a GM with the 49ers now, it’s clear, was dependent on how Jim Harbaugh molded and improved the players Baalke gave him.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
The four Tobacco Road schools hit quite a speedbump Saturday.
For the first time in nearly three years, North Carolina, Duke, N.C. State and Wake Forest all lost on the same day. It might have been just the second time that’s happened in the storied history of this college hoops hotbed.
No. 5 Duke, No. 9 North Carolina and Wake Forest all lost at about the same time early Saturday afternoon, with Virginia Tech beating the Blue Devils 89-75, Georgia Tech knocking off the Tar Heels 75-63 and Clemson rallying past the Demon Deacons 73-68.
N.C. State then capped off the state’s 0-for-4 day by losing 81-63 at Miami.
The last time everything came together in such a decidedly imperfect storm was Jan. 11, 2014. On that day, North Carolina lost by 12 at Syracuse, Wake Forest fell by 15 points at Pittsburgh. Duke lost at Clemson and N.C. State lost to Virginia.
Another instance of the four schools losing on the same day couldn’t be found. Two of the schools have incomplete sets of records from the era before the Atlantic Coast Conference’s formation in 1953: Wake Forest’s media guide doesn’t list complete dates of games played before the 1950-51 season, and N.C. State’s doesn’t before 1946-47.
The next time they all play on the same day is Jan. 21 and it’s guaranteed that won’t all lose again then - because Wake Forest visits N.C. State.
TENNIS
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Australian Open organizers have given 17-year-old Alex De Minaur and Andrew Whittington wild-card entries to the season’s first grand slam tournament.
De Minaur, a Wimbledon junior finalist last year, beat top-seeded Mikhail Kukushkin in the qualifying tournament for the Brisbane International, where he is set to make his ATP main draw debut this week. Whittington, 23, achieved a career-high ranking of No. 170 last November after winning six ITF titles and reaching semifinals at two ATP Challenger events.
Other wild cards already granted for the Australian Open men’s main draw include Denis Istomin, the Asia-Pacific Wildcard playoff winner from Uzbekistan, and Quentin Halys of France and Michael Mmoh of the United States, who were given reciprocal wildcards for the French Open and the U.S. Open.HOCKEY
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