With fewer marquee matchups on the schedule, week one of the college football season did not feature the blockbuster audiences of a year ago.
Last Sunday’s Wisconsin-Notre Dame college football game from Lambeau Field in Green Bay (Wis.) was the most-watched game in week one of the season, averaging 8.1 million viewers on NBC across a Nielsen-measured linear audience (3.3 rating, 7.42M viewers) and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics (683K) — marking the third-largest Notre Dame audience on NBC in the past two decades.
(Note that changes in Nielsen methodology — its 2020 inclusion of out-of-home viewing, 2025 shift to a new methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes, and newly-introduced changes in how it measures co-viewing — will tend to skew comparisons to past years.)
Notre Dame’s win was the only game of week one to average even six million viewers. By comparison, five week one games last season topped the six million mark, including four that averaged more than ten million. Among those was Notre Dame-Miami in the same Sunday night window, which averaged 10.8 million on ABC.
Note that last year’s game aired in an unopposed window, while Wisconsin-Notre Dame had to compete with Louisville-Mississippi on ABC. That game had a 2.2 and 4.69 million. Combined, the two Sunday night games averaged about 12.8 million, outpacing last year’s solo Notre Dame-Miami contest.
NBC’s Sunday doubleheader delivered two of the weekend’s top three audiences — with or without its Adobe Analytics streaming viewership included — as the Washington State-Washington Apple Cup led in with a combined 5.5 million across Nielsen (2.3 rating, 5.14M viewers) and Adobe.
Across the full weekend, NBC had three of the top seven games — more than any other network — with Michigan’s controversial Hail Mary win over Western Michigan averaging 4.5 million Saturday night (1.9 rating, 4.13M per Nielsen).
Western Michigan-Michigan placed second Saturday night behind the weather-delayed Clemson-LSU on ABC’s “Saturday Night Football.” Lane Kiffin’s LSU debut, which began after 9:30 PM ET and did not end until nearly 1 AM, averaged a 2.6 and 5.75 million — down 45% from the same matchup in the equivalent window last year (10.45M).
ABC also suffered a sharp decline earlier in the day, with Baylor-Auburn averaging a 1.8 and 4.24 million — down 60% from Florida State’s higher-profile upset of Alabama a year ago (10.66M). In a rarity, ABC did not win the 3:30 PM ET window, as CBS came out ahead with Oregon’s near-disaster against Boise State at a 2.1 and 4.83 million, more than double Nevada-Penn State a year ago (2.24M).
Only one of the four ABC windows posted an increase, as East Carolina-Alabama drew a 1.7 and 3.78 million — up 46% from Syracuse-Tennessee last year (2.59M), which faced historically strong competition from Texas-Ohio State on FOX (16.62M).
This year’s FOX “Big Noon” matchup was not nearly as high profile, with North Texas-Indiana drawing a 1.3 and 2.82 million — down an unsurprising, if nonetheless massive, 83%. That led into Boston College-Cincinnati at a 0.5 and 1.10 million.
Among games on cable, SMU-Florida State topped week one with an average of 4.07 million on ESPN in primetime on Labor Day — down a third from TCU-North Carolina in Bill Belichick’s debut last year (6.07M). Note that the game was delayed more than an hour due to a power outage.
Colorado-Georgia Tech placed second with a 1.9 and 3.73 million on ESPN last Thursday night, up 12% from last year’s comparable Thursday game (Nebraska-Cincinnati 3.33M), and on par with the teams’ matchup on the Friday of week one last year (3.74M).
ESPN’s top Saturday game was Texas State-Texas at a 1.0 and 2.31 million, up 38% from Marshall-Georgia last year (1.67M). The Oregon State-Houston lead-in, which ESPN moved to ESPNews in order to show the Texas game in its entirety, averaged a 0.8 and 1.69 million — more-than-doubling last year’s pairing of Mississippi State and Southern Miss (771K), and topping the week’s top-performing games on BTN (Ball State-Ohio State: 0.7, 1.60M) and FS1 (Ohio-Nebraska: 0.5, 1.12M) head-to-head.
In the first Friday night head-to-head of the season, ESPN came out ahead over FOX with a 1.0 and 1.98 million for Miami-Stanford, compared to a 0.7 and 1.32 million for Fresno State-USC. The Friday slate also included Toledo-Michigan State at a 0.4 and 873,000 on FS1.
