With Indiana and Kansas making marquee matchups out of what would typically be forgettable games, week thirteen of the college football season was a rare weekend not dominated by the SEC and ABC.
A top-ten matchup of Indiana and Ohio State averaged 9.32 million viewers on FOX “Big Noon Saturday” over the weekend, marking the top college football audience of the weekend. The Buckeyes’ win ranks second for the season among games on FOX, behind Ohio State-Penn State earlier this month (9.77M), and seventh overall — behind four games on ABC and Ohio State-Oregon on NBC.
In a season that has been dominated by the “SEC on ABC,” FOX won the Noon ET window — home to its prized “Big Noon Saturday” slate — for just the sixth time in 13 weeks. ABC, which even after this weekend has still won the Noon ET window more often than FOX has this season, was far behind with 3.82 million for Mississippi-Florida.
FOX also won the mid-afternoon window for the first time this season, as Colorado’s upset loss to Kansas drew 6.22 million — the most-watched Buffaloes game this season. The previous high was 5.67 million for their week two matchup with Nebraska on NBC (5.67M). ABC’s competing Kentucky-Texas game drew 4.47 million, its least-watched game in the mid-afternoon window since UCLA-LSU in week four (2.73M). This weekend was just the third this season in which ABC did not win the mid-afternoon window.
ABC did win primetime for the 11th time in 13 weeks, averaging 6.98 million for Alabama’s loss to Oklahoma — the second-largest audience of the weekend. The network is now averaging 5.8 million viewers for the season, its highest average entering Thanksgiving weekend since 2009 (6.2M).
Alabama-Oklahoma faced tougher-than-usual competition from Army-Notre Dame on NBC, which drew 4.1 million (3.89M per Nielsen, plus additional streaming data tracked by Adobe Analytics) — the largest audience to watch Notre Dame play against the armed forces since a 1996 game against Air Force.
Notre Dame’s win delivered the team’s largest NBC audience since their upset loss to Northern Illinois early in the season (4.3M). It was the first half of a rare — likely unprecedented — primetime NBC doubleheader, with USC-UCLA averaging 2.3 million in a late night window (2.16M per Nielsen, plus Adobe Analytics). NBC’s Big Ten coverage this season is averaging 3.6 million viewers across Nielsen and Adobe, up 45% from the same point last year.
Shifting to cable, ESPN topped out at 2.53 million for the four-overtime Texas A&M-Auburn game Saturday night, preceded by BYU-Arizona state at 1.31 million and Wake Forest-Miami at 986,000.
Comparisons to the same weekend last year are apples-to-oranges, as last year’s contests took place over Thanksgiving weekend.
