Texas and USC delivered another thriller — and in the process helped FOX top the college football charts for the first time ever.
Saturday’s Texas-USC college football game had a 3.6 overnight rating on FOX, down 5% from Ohio State-Oklahoma last year (3.8) but up 112% from Cal-Texas in 2015 (1.7). Excluding conference championship and bowl games, it was the fourth-highest college football overnight ever on FOX behind Notre Dame-Stanford in 2015 (4.7), Michigan State-Oregon in 2014 (4.0) and last year’s aforementioned Ohio State-Oklahoma game.
The 3.6 was the highest college football overnight of the day on any network, marking the first time since FOX began televising regular season games in 2012 that it has topped the charts in any week.
The Trojans’ double-overtime win topped the competing Clemson-Louisville game on ABC by 9% (3.3). The Tigers’ rout, which replaced ABC’s originally-scheduled Miami-Florida State game, was actually up 57% from Stanford-USC last year (2.1) and 22% from USC-Stanford in 2015 (2.7).
Compared to the teams’ meeting last season, which also aired on ABC’s Saturday Night Football but in week five, overnights fell 45% from a 6.0.
Overnights for ABC’s afternoon games were not immediately available. While FOX took overall honors, ESPN topped the cable charts with a 1.4 overnight for LSU-Mississippi State (1.4, +17%). ESPN also posted big increases for Notre Dame-Boston College (1.3, +63%) and Oklahoma State-Pittsburgh (1.1, +57%) while ESPN2 had a big gain of its own for Colorado State-Alabama (1.0, +43%).
[Wknd. numbers from Fox Sports PR/Twitter 9.17, ESPN]
