The Colorado Buffaloes’ worst loss of the season played out in front of their smallest television crowd in the Deion Sanders era.
Friday’s Stanford-Colorado college football game averaged a 1.9 rating and 3.29 million viewers on ESPN, marking easily the least-watched Buffaloes game of the season on Nielsen-rated television. Every other Colorado game on a Nielsen-rated network averaged at least seven million. (The Buffaloes’ game against Arizona State the previous week likely averaged fewer viewers on Pac-12 Network, but that channel is not Nielsen-rated.)
The previous Colorado game on cable — against Colorado State last month — averaged 9.3 million. Like that Colorado State game, Stanford-Colorado went to double-overtime and ended well into the early morning hours on the East Coast.
If low for a Colorado game, viewership was still the highest for a Friday night game this season and second-highest of any weeknight game (excluding holidays). Nebraska-Minnesota averaged 3.49 million on FOX on the opening Thursday of the season.
Viewership was nowhere close to the all-time high for a Friday night game on the ESPN networks, 7.79 million for Oregon-Arizona on Black Friday in 2010.
Earlier in the night, Tulane-Memphis averaged 1.72 million viewers — up 80% from Navy-SMU in the same window last year (959K).
(Nielsen estimates from ESPN PR, Sports TV Ratings 10.16)
