Web traffic soars on College Football Playoff news

As a TCU fan, alumnus and letterman, Scott Nix believes the College Football Playoff committee dropped the ball Sunday, taking Ohio State over the Horned Frogs for the final spot in the bracket.

But as the owner of the popular TCU message board KillerFrogs.com, Nix couldn’t have asked for a better day.

As the Frogs floated on the bubble of the College Football Playoff, Nix’s site become an destination for fans wanting to sound off about the Frogs or the playoff.

During Sunday’s College Football Playoff Selection Show on ESPN, the website averaged a record 5,494 viewers.

“Whether it was Coach Fran leaving to go to Alabama, or hiring Gary Patterson or us changing conferences or us going to the Rose Bowl or us getting in the Big 12, this college playoff deal topped it all,” Nix said.

KillerFrogs.com collected 354,104 page views Sunday, with 11,672 of those coming from unique addresses. In the first seven days of December, Nix’s site had 1.5 million page views, on pace to break the monthly record of 4 million views set in November.

“It’s almost like losing someone to death,” Nix said. “People are going through their depression cycle right now and then are going to come around and realize that we have to keep going. I think that’s what the board is kind of doing. They’re working their way through it.”

Nix’s site isn’t the only TCU-focused domain that saw an influx of traffic this weekend.

HornedFrogBlitz.com of the Scout.com network saw a 25 percent increase in traffic, PurpleMenace.com of the Rivals network saw a 77 percent increase and Frogs O War of the SB Nation network saw a 25 percent increase.

HornedFrogBlitz.com publisher Jeremy Clark said the influx of views came more from football fans unaffiliated with TCU who were checking in on Horned Frogs fan reactions to the playoff snub.

Star-Telegram.com had an 11.3 percent increase in page views from the previous Sunday, 658,611 on CFP Sunday compared with 591,894 the previous week. The website recorded a 61 percent increase in page views at the noon hour — after the 11:45 a.m. announcement — over the same time the previous Sunday. TCU stories accounted for four of the top five stories on the website Sunday.

The same was said of Sic’EmSports.com, Baylor’s Rivals site, which saw an increase of five times the normal traffic.

BuckeyeGrove.com, Ohio State’s Rivals site, saw a 20 percent increase in traffic Sunday compared with last year, when Ohio State was selected to play in the Orange Bowl.

The buzz was not contained to just schools in the top six of the final College Football Playoff rankings.

RedRaiderSports.com, the Texas Tech Rivals site, had 17,840 views on message board threads related to the playoff. Through the weekend, 102 posts were created to talk about issues other than the playoff, but on Sunday, 90 threads alone dealt with conversation surrounding the playoff.

Neal McCready, publisher of Ole Miss’s Rivals affiliate RebelGrove.com, said his site’s traffic rose an estimated 40 percent on Sunday during the selection of the six playoff teams.

“If their goal was to generate interest, they achieved that,” McCready said.

OrangeBloods.com, the heavyweight in the Rivals network covering the University of Texas, had roughly 300,000 more visitors Sunday than a week prior, with the two hottest message board topics being the playoff and the official visit of five-star recruit Malik Jefferson.

ASUDevils.com reported only a 5 percent increase in traffic Sunday, but cited a disappointing ending to the season as the main reason traffic has been low for several weeks. Publisher Chris Karpman said it was still one of his top-10 traffic days of the year.

“I would say there was more buzz and more traffic because there was more mystery with the whole thing,” Jim Comparoni, Michigan State’s SpartanMag.com publisher, said.

The first 30 minutes of Sunday’s College Football Playoff Selection Show garnered a 3.4 overnight television rating, compared with a 3.7 for Game 7 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals.

ESPN’s weekly College Football Playoff Selection Show on Tuesday nights averaged 1.1 million viewers.

There’s no doubt in Nix’s mind that these numbers prove that college football has never been more in the spotlight with the introduction of the College Football Playoff.

“It was an incredible day,” he said.

This story was originally published December 10, 2014 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Web traffic soars on College Football Playoff news."