The Wolverines beat the Buckeyes on Saturday and damn near beat the Browns on Sunday.
In TV viewership, that is.
Michigan’s 42-27 upset of Ohio State on Saturday averaged 15.83 million viewers for the noon kickoff on Fox — the best TV audience for the rivalry since 16.84 million viewers watched on ABC in 2016, when OSU won in overtime.
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Saturday’s game was the largest audience for a college game this season.
NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” telecast of the Cleveland Browns falling to the Baltimore Ravens 16-10 despite picking off four Lamar Jackson passes averaged 16.22 million viewers.
NFL games typically get much bigger audiences than regular-season college football games, with a few rivalry matches encroaching on the pro game’s broadcast dominance.
The Ohio State-Michigan rivalry has aired every year on TV since 1967 but has been largely a Buckeyes-dominated affair in the 21st century. The Wolverines hadn’t won in a decade. Saturday’s win could help re-establish the annual end-of-season meeting as a true rivalry, which always helps viewership.
Helping propel Saturday’s game to season-best audience metrics was not only that it was mostly close and an iconic event but also that a College Football Playoff berth was on the line for both schools. Also, the game wasn’t played in 2020 because of a COVID-19 outbreak. The game averaged 12.42 million viewers in the pre-pandemic 2019 season.
Before Saturday, the season’s best college football audience had been 9.28 million viewers on Oct. 30 for Michigan State topping Michigan.
That game now ranks third after OSU-UM and the Iron Bowl, which was almost the Iron Oxide Bowl for Alabama until a late rally to tie and then beat Auburn in four overtimes. That game averaged 10.36 million viewers for its mid-afternoon kickoff on CBS. A year ago, it averaged 6.66 million viewers (make your own mark-of-the-beast joke).
Two years ago, the Iron Bowl got 11.43 million viewers in pre-pandemic metrics for Auburn’s upset victory.
The chief takeaway from these numbers, and what we’ve seen this season, is that college football continues its slow recovery from the pandemic-fueled audience declines that have devastated much of television viewership. And because of cord-cutting — overall U.S. TV viewership is down 21 percent since the summer of 2019, per Sportico — live sports are basically propping up the TV universe at this point.
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“College football hasn’t been hitting the high notes, but it’s been much more solid,” said Jon Lewis, who has analyzed such data since 2006 at Sports Media Watch.
He compared college football’s TV consumption this year to the Utah Jazz: strong performers up and down the roster, but not like the Lakers with two or three stars and then a bunch of minimum-contract roster-fillers.
“This has been a better season with more games with solid numbers rather than feast or famine,” Lewis said.
Also, just having games played at all, and when they’re supposed to be, with fans in the stands has helped audience recovery, he said.
“I think it’s been a joy for everyone who enjoys college football that the games are going to be played every week,” Lewis said. “And you don’t have three more weeks left of the season like last year.”
Up next is conference championship game season. That’s when some even more impressive numbers can show up, particularly with the games with CFP implications.
The red-letter match-up is the SEC title game between No. 1 Georgia and No. 3 Alabama at 4 p.m. ET Saturday on CBS.
“You’re going to have a playoff-style audience for that game. It’s a national championship rematch (from 2018), as well,” Lewis said. “That’ll get a great number. Better than Ohio State-Michigan.”
The other conference championship games are a mixed bag for viewership potential, partly because of television scheduling.
The Big Ten championship game between No. 2 Michigan and No. 13 Iowa at 8 p.m. ET on Fox might not draw a mammoth audience, even with the Wolverines being a national program playing in its first conference title game. The Hawkeyes are not a national draw.
“You just never know. That might be lower than people are expecting,” Lewis said.
One conference championship game’s TV schedule is especially confounding, he added.
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That’s No. 4 Cincinnati versus No. 21 Houston at 4 p.m. ET Saturday on ABC — the same kickoff time as Georgia-Alabama. The network is airing the ACC title game between No. 15 Pitt and No. 16 Wake Forest in the primo 8 p.m. ET time slot.
“The crummiest time slot is opposite the SEC championship game,” Lewis said. “(Cincinnati-Houston) is more relevant and shouldn’t be buried. That’s ridiculous. That game is going to get a raw deal.”
And No. 9 Baylor against No. 5 Oklahoma State in the Big 12 title game? It’s at noon ET on ABC, but even with a CFP slot at stake for the Cowboys, it’s not a sexy draw for casual fans.
“It’s not the most appealing possible matchup, but it should do OK,” Lewis said.
Now let us turn our attention to the National Football League.
As America gorged on “beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes, lambs, rams, hogs, dogs, chicken, turkeys, rabbits” on Thanksgiving, it did so with its televisions tuned to football in enormous numbers.
The mid-afternoon Raiders-Cowboys game averaged 37.84 million viewers for CBS, which is the best regular-season NFL audience since 38.4 million viewers watched the infamous Leon Lett muffed kick game on Thanksgiving in 1993 that led to Miami beating Dallas in the snow.
There was some speculation that the Raiders’ overtime win over the Cowboys — two clubs with large national fan bases — could top the regular-season TV viewership record of 41.47 million for the Giants-49ers game in December 1990.
The other holiday games last week produced healthy TV numbers: The Bears beating the Lions on a last-second field goal averaged 26.74 million viewers for the early game on Fox. In the prime-time game on NBC, the average was 19.37 million viewers.
Also, “The NFL Today” pregame show on CBS averaged 17.4 million viewers, and the postgame show averaged 15.2 million viewers. NBC’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade coverage that began at 9 a.m. ET averaged 22 million viewers, followed by the National Dog Show getting 11.36 million viewers. We love our parades and pooches!
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The NFL said the three Thanksgiving games (TV and digital) averaged 29.7 million viewers, the highest Thanksgiving Day NFL average since 1998 (when it was two games, averaging 29.7 million viewers without streaming or out-of-home).
The 2019 pre-pandemic NFL Thanksgiving TV numbers, for context:
• Bears vs Lions (noon, Fox): 27 million
• Bills-Cowboys (midafternoon, CBS): 32.64 million
• Saints-Falcons (prime time, NBC): 20.8 million
• NBC Macy’s parade (balloons vs. wind): 22.14 million
Overall, the NFL is seeing its best television numbers since 2015. An asterisk should be included because older numbers don’t include out-of-home streaming, but that’s not yet a huge factor. Also, household ratings — the number of homes tuned in to a particular program — show the NFL as being pretty stable. But ultimately, the raw viewership totals remain, by far, the biggest thing on TV, and everyone involved is getting richer.
“The NFL is just really showboating now. This is a league, even if it was down 2 to 3 percent from 2019, with a successful year,” Lewis said, chuckling.
And for those who read every week and keep track of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” here’s the viewership so far this season:
• Week 1: Bears-Rams, 17.64 million
• Week 2: Chiefs-Ravens, 19.81 million
• Week 3: Packers-49ers, 19.69 million
• Week 4: Buccaneers-Patriots, 26.75 million
• Week 5: Bills-Chiefs, 18.4 million
• Week 6: Seahawks-Steelers, 17.2 million
• Week 7: Colts-49ers, 16.9 million
• Week 8: Cowboys-Vikings, 15.58 million
• Week 9: Titans-Rams, 14.21 million
• Week 10: Chiefs-Raiders, 16.74 million
• Week 11: Steelers-Chargers, 14.59 million
• Week 12: Browns-Ravens, 16.22 million
Soccer: Thanks to the NFL lead-in, Portland’s 1-0 win over Colorado in the MLS Cup playoffs on Thanksgiving averaged 1.85 million viewers, per Fox. That makes it the most viewed MLS match on a U.S. English-language network since 1.97 million viewers tuned in for DC United-San Jose in April 2004. It’s also the biggest MLS viewership ever on Fox, the network said.
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One has to wonder how the game would have done if it hadn’t been up against the Raiders-Cowboys game. But that’s the nature of playing live matches in the fall.
Golf: The Match V charity golf event (Brooks Koepka defeated rival Bryson DeChambeau) averaged 633,000 viewers for TNT and 283,000 on TBS on Friday afternoon. The event is random when it occurs (rather than a set schedule), and being staged the day after Thanksgiving likely didn’t help much. Black Friday is for shopping and napping, baby. And for many, decorating and doing yard work.
The Match II had the event’s peak audience, averaging 5.8 million viewers in May 2020 for Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning beating Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady on a Sunday on TBS, TNT, TruTV and HLN.
In July, Match IV averaged 1.9 million viewers for DeChambeau, Mickelson, Brady and Aaron Rodgers.
Further reading: Here are some recent sports media stories worth your time …
• Richard Deitsch: Drew Brees begins his NFL analyst career; will Rebecca Lowe stay at NBC?
• Mike Vorkunov: The Nuggets have never been better, but their fans can’t watch them on TV. Your NBA market could be next
— All data is Nielsen and Adobe Analytics metrics via the TV networks, Sports Media Watch, Showbuzz Daily and the leagues.
(Photo of Ohio State running back Miyan Williams: Steven King / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)