It was not much of a game, but the second-ever meeting of Texas and Michigan delivered the top college football audience of the early season.
Texas-Michigan averaged 9.35 million viewers on FOX “Big Noon Saturday” over the weekend, per Nielsen (9.16M) and Adobe Analytics — surpassing USC-LSU on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend as the most-watched game of the season thus far.
Not counting bowls or conference championships, only five games all of last season had a larger Nielsen audience — Ohio State-Michigan (19.07M), Colorado-Oregon (10.03M), Ohio State-Notre Dame (9.98M), Penn State-Ohio State (9.96M) and Colorado State-Colorado (9.30M).
The Nielsen audience for the Longhorns’ easy win increased 5% from Nebraska-Colorado on the same weekend last season (8.73M). As goes without saying, Texas-Michigan was the most-watched college game of the weekend, comfortably surpassing the second-place figure of 6.3 million (5.67M per Nielsen, plus Adobe Analytics) for Colorado-Nebraska on NBC.
Earlier in the day on NBC, Northern Illinois’ upset win over Notre Dame averaged 4.3 million (3.93 million per Nielsen, plus Adobe Analytics) — marking the most-watched Notre Dame home opener in four years. Compared to NBC’s first Notre Dame game last season, the “week zero” game against Navy from Ireland, viewership increased 13% from 3.8 million.
In the same window on CBS, Iowa State-Iowa drew 2.28 million — down 23% from UNLV-Michigan last year (2.97M) and down 32% from the same CyHawk rivalry matchup a year ago — which aired in the same window, but on FOX (3.38M).
After a strong week one, ABC topped out at 2.96 million for Tennessee-NC State on Saturday Night Football, followed by 2.80 million for Arkansas-Oklahoma State. The network’s “SEC on ABC” package brought up the rear with 2.73 million. ESPN topped out at 2.58 million for USF-Alabama — not surprisingly down sharply from Texas-Alabama last year — and BTN drew 1.72 million for Western Michigan-Ohio State.
Returning to FOX, the big lead-in for Texas-Michigan did not carry over into its Baylor-Utah lead-out, which at 2.08 million sank sharply from last year’s aforementioned CyHawk game.
For the full list of week two college football ratings, see the preceding link.
