College Football Ouduels NBA Playoffs in Saturday TV Ratings
Television ratings across the board in the opening weekend of ACC and Big 12 football were far from impressive, a handful of individual games faired quite well.
Three games on the day posted ratings at or above a 2.0, with the Duke v. Notre Dame game on NBC coming in as the big winner of the day. Over 4.32-million viewers tuned in to see the Fighting Irish on Saturday's 2:30 p.m. ET kick, posting a rating of 2.4, a 140% gain on last year's game in the same time slot.
Georgia Tech v. FSU (3:30 p.m. on ABC) and Clemson v. Wake Forest (7:30 p.m. on ABC) posted viewership of 3.52 and 3.46-million for No. 2 and No. 3 most watched games of the weekend. Both of these numbers were down 50% or 60% from prior years.
The ESPN noon game of Louisiana vs. Iowa State, where Billy Napier's Ragin' Cajuns upset the ranked Iowa State team out of the Big 12 drew the biggest cable tv rating for college football this past Saturday. On ESPN, they drew a rating of 0.53 while pulling in 1.68-million viewers.
All things considered, not a bad weekend for college football. For reference, Saturday evening's Los Angeles Lakers v. Houston Rockets conference semifinal playoff game posted a 1.41 rating for 3.72-million viewers.
Additionally, two of the most traditionally highly watched teams in the conferences who played this weekend were not on national tv. The Texas Longhorns played on the infamous Longhorn Network while the Oklahoma Sooners played in a pay per view game.
When we get the Longhorns and Sooners back on national television, and the SEC back into full swing, expectations should surge for CFB viewership.
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