Aided by limited competition, the Big 12 was cable’s top draw during college football’s championship week.
Last Saturday’s Texas/Baylor college football game drew 3.9 million viewers on ESPN, up 201% from Houston/Cincinnati last year (1.3M), up 174% from UCF/SMU in 2013 (1.4M) and the most-watched college game of the week on cable. Ratings were not immediately available.
The Longhorns’ upset win benefited from little competition, facing only the Houston/Temple American Athletic Championship on ABC.
The Stanford/USC Pac-12 Championship Game, which aired opposite the Big Ten and ACC title games, ranked a distant second with 2.6 million — up 19% from Kansas State/Baylor in the same window last year (2.2M) and up 78% from the 2013 Pac-12 Championship between Arizona and Stanford (1.5M). Last year’s Pac-12 Championship took place on a Friday night and aired on FOX, earning 6.0 million viewers.
Elsewhere on the ESPN family of networks, last Friday’s Bowling Green/Northern Illinois MAC Championship had a 0.7 final rating and 1.0 million viewers on ESPN2 — up 40% in ratings and viewership from the same matchup last year (0.5, 692K) but down 42% and 45%, respectively, from the same matchup in 2013 (1.2, 1.9M).
The Southern Miss/Western Kentucky Conference USA Championship scored 488,000 on ESPN2 the following afternoon, down a third from Louisiana Tech/Marshall last year (725K) but up 9% from Marshall/Rice in 2013 (449K).
Finally, the Mountain West title game between Air Force and San Diego State was the week’s least-watched game on any network with 362,000 viewers — up 73% from Temple/Tulane in the same window last year (209K) and up 81% from USF/Rutgers in 2013 (200K). The MWC Championship aired on CBS in the previous two years, scoring 1.5 million last year and 1.7 million in 2013.
(Wknd. numbers via ShowBuzz Daily, TV Media Insights)
