Alabama-Tennessee hits ratings high

A top-ten SEC clash that lived up to the billing, Alabama-Tennessee hit season-highs in ratings and viewership on CBS.

Tennessee’s high-scoring win over Alabama Saturday averaged a 6.1 rating and 11.56 million viewers on CBS, the teams’ most-watched game on record (dating back to 1987) and the highest rated and most-watched game of the season. The previous highs were a 5.7 and 10.60 million for Alabama’s near loss to Texas on FOX in week two. Alabama has now played in three of the five most-watched games thus far, with their other near-loss to Texas A&M in the five spot (3.9, 7.15M).

So far this season, seven of the nine most-watched college football game have featured an SEC team. By comparison, only two of the top 11 have featured a team from the Big Ten. The SEC on CBS has delivered the top audience of the week in all five weeks it has been on air (one of those weeks included a Big Ten opponent, Penn State).

In addition to hitting a season-high, Saturday’s game delivered the largest regular season college football audience on CBS since LSU-Alabama in November 2019 (16.71M).

No other week seven game came close to Alabama-Tennessee, but the week’s other top-ten matchup — Penn State-Michigan — delivered a top-ten audience of its own. The Wolverines’ win averaged a 3.7 and 6.45 million on FOX, the sixth-largest audience of the season and second-largest for an afternoon game.

As one would expect, both Alabama-Tennessee and Penn State-Michigan surged over last year’s equivalent windows.

In other weekend action, Clemson-Florida State ranked third for the weekend with a combined audience of 3.38 million across ABC and ESPN2, still down from TCU-Oklahoma on ABC alone last year (~3.43M). The ABC-only rating was a 1.8 (-2%).

The Tigers’ win still topped a crowded primetime window, outdrawing Utah’s upset of USC on FOX (1.5, 2.74M), LSU-Florida on ESPN (1.3, 2.46M) and Stanford-Notre Dame on NBC (1.2, 2.15M). Utah-USC posted a sharp increase over last year (UCLA-Washington: 0.9, ~1.5M), while LSU-Florida sank more than 30% (Alabama-Mississippi State: 2.0, ~3.5M).

Other notable results include a 1.3 and 2.14 million for TCU’s overtime win over Oklahoma State on ABC, down more than a third from last year (Purdue-Iowa: 2.0, ~3.4M) and ranking just third in the mid-afternoon window — behind both Alabama-Tennessee and Wisconsin-Michigan State on FOX (1.4, 2.45M). It was not even the top Big 12 game of the weekend, trailing the preceding Iowa State-Texas game on ABC (1.3, 2.35M).

As for the smaller networks, ESPN2 topped out at a 0.7 and 1.21 million for Kansas-Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon; FS1’s top game was Baylor-West Virginia last Thursday (0.6, 1.15M); BTN’s top audience was 943,000 for Nebraska-Purdue Saturday night.

The full list of week seven college football ratings is below, while charts for every week this season are available on the main college football ratings page.