re: Most watched college football games ever

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Had it been a good game I'm sure the Alabama-Notre Dame game from 2013 would have made the list. As it stands, however, Alabama scored with ease on its first three drives to take a 21-0 lead at the start of the second quarter.

Alabama was already a heavy favorite going into the game. When it was 28-0 at the half, the vast majority of people turned the game off.

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Hmm. I'm not clear on the technical details of how they collate and establish ratings. Do they require a viewer to be tuned in the entire game? Is there a threshold or percentage of the running time where a household is counted? One assumes they must have some sort of fairly detailed guidelines because better/worse ratings = more/less money they can demand from advertisers. So if a viewer changed the channel at half-time, the networks care what they changed the channel to, which means they also care that the viewer was watching 2 hours of the game even if the viewer changed the channel before the end.

Any media types out there who can lend some insight?

Mississippi @ AlaBama 1969 was the first Nat'l Color Broadcast, iIrc.

Went with my dad to my uncles home to watch; because he had a color TV.

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Two Heisman winners vs. the most unstoppable QB in the country. That Texas comeback is the stuff of legends. I remember the footballgasm I had when Vince Young ran the ball into the endzone for the final score. It was the greatest game I had ever seen. Absolutely amazing.

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I was pulling for Texas in that game (sorry, Ags). Watched it up until there were a couple of minutes left. USC had the lead, the ball, and Mack had that deer in the headlights look on the sideline. I thought it was over and went to bed. Woke up and was shocked at the outcome and pissed that I'd missed it.

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35.6 million - ABC, BCS title game/Rose Bowl, Rose Bowl, Jan. 4, 2006, Texas vs USC.

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30.8 million - ABC, BCS title game, Jan. 7, 2010, Alabama vs. Texas

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USC made me lose bank

That Texas-USC game is the greatest college football game ever

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I just can't fathom how a game from 1993 had more viewers than a recent 'hyped up' matchup (e.g. Game of the Century, 2013 Alabama/Notre Dame, etc)

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Eta: The amount of tv's we're surrounded by today dwarfs the amount they had in 1993

I'm sorry. It just kills me how these younguns believe anything before 2005 was the dark ages. Yes son, we've had TV's since the 50's. People were also as eager to see football 40,50, 75 years ago as they are today.
There are the same amount of TV's in my house as there was in 1993 Good grief son.

As a side not, people forget how hyped that Bama-Miami game was. Most here weren't alive. Seems most here's parents weren't alive either looking at what I believe to be the median age on this site.

I believe if you took Nielsen ratings the 71 OU-Nebraska, 73 Bama-ND and the 93 ND-FSU game and maybe the 69 Arkie-Texas games were actually higher than the Rose Bowl. As far as Bama-LSU GOC, there have been plenty games of the century. They'll be another soon between somebody.

In games like the super bowl I'm pretty sure they leave open slots for commercials during the 2nd half. How the game is going is what decides the cost of the commercial. Isn't it something like 30 mil. for a super bowl commercial? That could be way off but I know the numbers are crazy.