College football TV ratings reveal Week 1’s true winner

USC-LSU led with 9.2 million viewers, followed by Notre Dame-Texas A&M (8.2 million), Georgia-Clemson (7.9 million), Miami-Florida (6.6 million), North Dakota State-Colorado (4.8 million) and Florida State-Boston College (4.4 million). 

Penn State-West Virginia was the top non-ABC/ESPN game, drawing 2.99 million viewers on Fox.

NBC received the smallest number among the highlighted games, drawing 2.6 million to its 7:30 p.m. EST Fresno State-Michigan game.

While those numbers should ebb and flow throughout the season — we’d expect Fox to win the ratings war in Week 2 with Texas-Michigan airing directly after “Big Noon Kickoff” — ESPN’s SEC schedule should draw massive numbers throughout the season.

This weekend, ABC is the only network to air a ranked-vs.-ranked primetime game with No. 14 Tennessee’s contest against No. 24 NC State kicking off at 7:30 p.m. EST.

It’s competing directly with ratings magnet Colorado, which plays at Nebraska on NBC. That could be a major draw this weekend, but ESPN appears to have made a shrewder investment in its massive rights deal with the SEC than Fox, NBC and CBS with the Big Ten.

In December 2020, ESPN and the SEC agreed to a 10-year, $3 billion exclusive television rights package. Later, in August 2022, Fox, NBC and CBS signed a seven-year, $8 billion media rights deal with the Big Ten.

ESPN is getting its money’s worth early while the other major players in college football’s media-rights landscape wait for a return on investment.