It was like the old days for CBS on Saturday, as the network’s 3:30 PM ET window was the most-watched of the college football weekend.
Saturday’s Ohio State-Iowa college football game averaged 5.97 million viewers on CBS, marking the network’s largest college football audience on a competitive regular season weekend since USC-Michigan in 2024 (6.32M). CBS has averaged larger audiences for the Army-Navy Game and its lone Big Ten Championship, but those games faced limited or no competition.
The Buckeyes’ win, which peaked with 6.96 million, increased 14% from Ohio State-Washington last year and finished as the most-watched college football game of the weekend — the first time since that USC-Michigan game that CBS has topped the charts on a competitive weekend.
CBS regularly topped college football weekends during the years when it carried the SEC package, but the network has often been lost in the shuffle since shifting to Big Ten coverage. There have been multiple weeks this season when the network failed to crack the two million mark in its traditional 3:30 PM window, including a Week 2 Mississippi State-Minnesota game that had just 1.16 million.
Likely helping matters last weekend was the presence of ESPN’s “College GameDay,” which originated from Iowa and attracted its largest audience of the season (2.88M).
CBS also owes its first-place finish to an unusually soft weekend for ABC, which topped out at 5.08 million for Alabama-Mississippi State — the fewest viewers to watch the network’s top game of the week in more than two years. Not since week two of the 2024 season, when ABC was blacked out on DirecTV, had the network topped out at fewer than 5.2 million.
Viewership still increased 19% from Notre Dame-Arkansas last year (4.26M) and topped the Noon ET window. ESPN or ABC has now won the “Big Noon” window in four of five weeks this season.
ABC averaged the second, third and fourth-largest audiences of the weekend. Miami-Clemson, the network’s first non-SEC game of the season, averaged 4.63 million in primetime — down an unsurprising 56% from Alabama-Georgia last year (10.42M). Florida-Missouri averaged 4.45 million in the mid-afternoon window (-33%), facing not only Ohio State-Iowa but also the most-watched SEC game on ESPN all season, Auburn-Tennessee (3.02M).
Because the highest-profile SEC games air on ABC, the conference has not generally been the biggest draw on ESPN. For the season, Auburn-Tennessee ranks sixth among ESPN games behind North Carolina-TCU (4.91M) and NC State-Virginia (3.22M) in “week zero,” SMU-Florida State (4.07M) and Colorado-Georgia Tech in week one (3.73M) and North Carolina-Clemson in week three (3.59M). The Tar Heels added another game to the list on Saturday, as their loss to Notre Dame placed seventh with 2.98 million — giving them three of the top seven.
Overall, the ACC accounts for seven of the ten largest college football audiences on ESPN this season, including 2.43 million for Pittsburgh-Virginia Tech Friday night. That game, which declined 45% from Florida State-Virginia last year (4.39M), went head-to-head with Penn State-Northwestern on FOX (3.45M). FOX has won the Friday night head-to-head with ESPN in four of five weeks this season.
