While Ohio State-Oregon took center stage, it was not the only outsized draw of the college football weekend.
Despite a lopsided 34-3 final score, the first SEC edition of the Texas-Oklahoma Red River Rivalry averaged a 3.9 rating and 7.6 million viewers on ABC — down from last year (4.2, 7.87M) but the second-largest audience for the game since 2009 (8.71M) and fourth-largest on record, excluding regionalized windows.
Including additional streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics, the game’s audience of 7.9 million is the third-largest.
The Longhorns’ easy win — which peaked with 8.8 million viewers — delivered the sixth-largest audience of the season, with eight of the top nine games featuring at least one SEC team.
For the weekend, it placed second only to the Ohio State-Oregon game on NBC, which finished with a combined audience of 10.4 million across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. On a Nielsen-only basis, the Ducks’ win drew a 4.6 and 9.60 million — trailing only Georgia-Alabama on ABC two weeks earlier (11.99M) as the most-watched game of the season.
Returning to the afternoon slate, ABC drew a 3.2 and 6.00 million for Alabama’s near-upset at the hands of South Carolina — nearly tripling Syracuse-Florida State in the same window last year (1.2, 2.09M). The game, which peaked with 9.0 million viewers, ranked third for the weekend and dominated the Noon ET window, cruising past Washington-Iowa on FOX “Big Noon Saturday” (1.4, 2.37M).
CBS took fourth place with a 2.2 and 4.28 million for Penn State-USC, down slightly from a Texas A&M-Tennessee SEC game last season (2.3, 4.38M). The Nittany Lions’ overtime win was of course no match for the competing Texas-Oklahoma game on ABC, but easily outdrew Notre Dame’s rout of Stanford on NBC (1.0, 1.87M).
Rounding out the top five, ABC drew a 2.3 and 4.24 million for Mississippi-LSU — up a third and 38% respectively from Miami-North Carolina last year (1.7, 3.08M).
Shifting to cable, Colorado’s loss to Kansas State led the way with a 1.8 and 3.26 million on ESPN — trailing only Colorado State-Colorado last year as the network’s most-watched late night Saturday game since 2012. The game built on its Florida-Tennessee lead-in, which had a 1.6 and 3.25 million.
