The Egg Bowl was not necessarily a bad draw on CBS, but it was nothing compared to the game it replaced.
Last Saturday’s Mississippi State/Mississippi college football game drew a 3.1 final rating and 5.1 million viewers on CBS, according to The Dallas-Morning News — down 62% in ratings and 63% in viewership from last year’s Alabama/Auburn Iron Bowl (8.2, 13.8M), but up 29% and 31%, respectively, from the 2012 Iron Bowl (2.4, 3.9M).
Mississippi’s upset win came nowhere close to this year’s Iron Bowl, which aired on ESPN for the first time in seven years (7.4, 13.5M). CBS passed on the Auburn/Alabama match-up, choosing to use its last Alabama selection of the season on a top five clash against Mississippi State in November.
Head-to-head, the Egg Bowl trailed the Florida/Florida State game on ESPN (3.5, 6.0M) but topped regional action on ABC (2.4, 4.0M) and Notre Dame/USC on FOX (1.3, 2.0M).
Last week was the second straight in which the SEC on CBS was not among the top three college football telecasts. To put that in perspective, the series topped the charts in eight of the previous ten weeks.
Shifting to Friday, CBS drew a 2.7 and 4.4 million for Arkansas/Missouri — down 13% in ratings and 12% in viewership from LSU/Arkansas last year (3.1, 5.0M).
(Wknd. numbers from Dallas-Morning News)
