For just the second time this season, FOX scored the highest college football overnight ratings of the weekend.
Saturday’s Ohio State-Michigan State college football game earned a 3.8 overnight rating on FOX, up 36% from the same matchup on FOX last year, and the highest rated game of week eleven in the metered markets. Since FOX began airing regular season college football games in 2012, Saturday marked just the sixth time the network has topped the charts.
The 3.8 is the second-highest college football overnight on FOX this season, behind Texas-Oklahoma last month (4.3).
Ranking second for the weekend, Mississippi State-Alabama drew a 3.4 overnight on CBS — down 28% from last year (Georgia-Auburn: 4.7) but up 17% from 2016 (Auburn-Georgia: 2.9).
In the competing window on ABC, Oklahoma State-Oklahoma earned a 3.0 (+36%). Overnights increased 76% from last year’s Bedlam game, which aired on FS1, but declined 12% from the 2016 matchup on FOX (3.4).
Shifting to primetime, Clemson-Boston College scored a 2.6 overnight on ABC — down 42% from Notre Dame-Miami in a top ten matchup last year (4.5), and down 35% from Michigan’s upset loss to Iowa in 2016 (4.0).
The concurrent Auburn-Georgia game on ESPN had a 2.3, down 32% from Mississippi State’s near-upset of Alabama last year (3.8), while NBC drew a 2.2 for Notre Dame’s destruction of Florida State.
In other action, Mississippi-Texas A&M drew a 1.4 overnight on CBS, and South Carolina-Florida drew a 1.3 on ESPN (+18%).
CORRECTION 11/11: ABC’s Oklahoma State-Oklahoma game ranked third for the weekend, not second as previously written.
[Numbers from ESPN PR, Fox Sports PR 11.11]
