With both teams facing unexpected tests one week before their head-to-head clash, Ohio State and Michigan ranked #1 and #2 in the college football viewer rankings over the weekend.
Airing back-to-back on ABC Saturday afternoon, Ohio State-Maryland (3.45, 6.60M) and Illinois-Michigan (3.05, 5.47M) were the two highest rated and most-watched games of the college football weekend. The Buckeyes’ narrow win delivered the tenth-largest audience of the season overall, with the Buckeyes in three of the top ten — trailing only Alabama (five) as the most of any team.
Michigan’s scare was the most-watched Noon ET game on ABC this season and comfortably outdrew the FOX “Big Noon Saturday” game — which saw fellow playoff contender TCU pull off its own great escape against Baylor (2.45, 4.35M).
ESPN/ABC owned the top three audiences of the weekend, with third-place going to Tennessee-South Carolina on ESPN (2.45, 4.87M) — the second-most watched game on cable this season behind Alabama-LSU on ESPN two weeks earlier (3.9, 7.58M).
The Volunteers blowout loss was the top primetime game of the weekend, topping the competing USC-UCLA game on FOX. The Trojans’ win ranked fourth for the weekend with a 2.2 and 4.53 million, blowing past Washington-Oregon on the same network a week earlier (3.63M) as the most-watched Pac-12 conference game this season. The Pac-12 also delivered its largest late night audience in five years for Utah-Oregon on ESPN (1.3, 2.54M).
Rounding out the top five, Georgia-Kentucky drew a 2.5 and 4.48 million on the SEC on CBS — the only game in the top five this week to decline from last year (Arkansas-Alabama: 3.2, ~5.5M).
Also on the down side in week twelve, ABC’s “Bedlam” game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State (1.7, 3.06M) was the least-watched edition of that rivalry since it aired on FS1 five years ago (2.49M) and Notre Dame’s rout of Boston College (0.8, 1.27M) was the team’s least-watched NBC game on record.
The full list of week twelve college football viewership is below. For the full season of charts, see this page.
Week 12 college football viewership
(Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 11.22)
