re: College Football's Biggest TV Draws

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I know you are joking, but they are noticeably absent. In fact, they did not have a single game hit the 5 million mark which is quite unbelievable.

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It’s really not. A boring program that hasn’t won a high profile game since what? McFadden beat LSU in OT? That’s over a hundred hog games of horrendous play since McFadden.

God damn you have some fantastic analysis sometimes.

Make sure you DM me when when you eventually do this regarding Big 12 expansion. I am dying to know how the new teams match up to the old ones and journalism like this in America is mostly dead.

Ahia St I get…kinda.

Meechigin: makes no fricking sense they continue to maintain this kind of prominence when they have not done jack shite in literally decades, much less top their historic rival in pretty much forever…

Auburn - Penn State apparently had very strong ratings. Except for Norte Dame, I also think it matters how many big games you play in.

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Our regular season game in 2018 vs OU. 5.X million viewers. The conference championship game against OU, 10 million viewers. Bandwagon city baby.

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5 Million for one game isn't impressive here. Championship games also aren't Regular Season and of course they draw more. Honestly I am surprised you guys have fallen down so far in interest considering how high you were riding in the '00s. Does prove my bandwagon point though. Hell I can get Texas tickets to most games for little more than I can go and see HS games without much effort. That home schedule sucks arse for you and I understand why you had to come begging to follow Big Bro.

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5 Million for one game isn't impressive here. Championship games also aren't Regular Season and of course they draw more. Honestly I am surprised you guys have fallen down so far in interest considering how high you were riding in the '00s. Does prove my bandwagon point though. Hell I can get Texas tickets to most games for little more than I can go and see HS games without much effort. That home schedule sucks arse for you and I understand why you had to come begging to follow Big Bro.

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It’s quite simple actually.. the bandwagon component consists of two groups..

1) We want to watch Team X win
2) We want to watch Team X lose

Both of these groups play a big part in TV viewership. See Colorado vs Texas A&M. The whole world jumped in because Top 5 A&M looked horrible and probably should have lost that game.

If A&M had lost to Kent State in Week 1, or if they hadn’t been ranked, then the numbers would have been substantially less..

Going back to the Texas vs Oklahoma game.. Texas has had at least 2 losses entering that game every year from 2013-2017. You lose a portion of both groups for this one simple reason.

As soon as Texas only had 1 loss in the 2018 game, the game jumped over 5 million. The next year in 2019 when Texas only had 1 loss, and had beaten Oklahoma the year before, the number jumped to 7.5 million.

Which adds two more groups to the score...

3) We want to watch Team Y win..
4) We want to watch Team Y lose..

Texas vs Oklahoma draws big numbers when you have all 4 groups invested in the game.

Alabama brings all 4 groups to every game against a good team.

Texas vs Notre Dame 2016 - First game of the year.. two historically great programs.. and a shitload of people who want to watch one or both teams lose.. And it was the only game on that night.. Imagine if both teams were any good..

Texas draws big when Texas doesn’t suck and they are playing an opponent that (1) can beat them and (2) has a group of fans that want the other team to lose.

If Texas has a good year this year.. maybe 8-4 or 9-3 and shows some improvement.. and assuming they don’t lose in Week 1 next year..

That Texas vs Alabama game will be a huge draw as you will have a lot of viewers from all 4 groups.

The A&M game this week will probably be over 5 million. Arkansas has a pulse and can win the game.. it is on CBS which will be in all households.. and there is a big group that wants to see A&M lose. I don’t think it will approach 10 million because Arkansas doesn’t have that 2nd group right now.. they always lose (in their heads)..

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It’s not CFBs biggest TV draws if you don’t count post season.

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Sure, include postseason. But it will skew the numbers. It's not going to give you a true picture of how popular a certain team is because a postseason broadcast is not the same as a regular season broadcast. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

In the regular season, there are a multitude of competing games on at the same time. In the postseason, often there is only one game on at a time, and its during a part of the year in which many people are at home and off work.

If you are going to look at postseason, you have to look at it by itself. But even then, there are just way too many inconsistencies.

For example... in 2016, the Cotton Bowl Classic pitted Wisconsin vs. Western Michigan. It drew 5.442 million viewers. The very next season, the same Cotton Bowl Classic drew Ohio St. vs. USC and understandably drew a much larger 9.468 million.

That's a HUGE difference in viewership. But is it Wisconsin's fault they got matched up with Western Michigan? Does anyone get excited about that matchup?

Secondly, the viewership in the postseason is just so much higher than in the regular season that it skews the numbers.

The Ohio State vs. Oregon 2014 National Title game took in over 34 million viewers. Including that in Oregon's talley completely skews their numbers. Since 2013, they've only had 4 regular season games top 5 million viewers. Including even one game at 34 million would skew the numbers so far in one direction, it would not at all give you an accurate picture of how popular Oregon is to normal everyday TV viewers.

The first rule of statistical anaylsis is getting rid of the outside noise. Including postseason games is not going to give you any usable data.

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The game has had high rating like that because it's in November and generally a lot is riding on the outcome. I imagine last year's game didn't have a great rating because there was nothing riding on the game. Basically, when two good teams play, people watch. LSU/Alabama was a nationally relevant game almost every year from 2013-2020.

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All of this is true, however evidence suggests the high ratings for both Alabama-LSU and the Iron Bowl have more to do with Alabama than the opponent.

Like I showed earlier, LSU's Top 6 highest rated regular season games since 2013 have all been against Alabama. Auburn's Top 7 rated regular season games since 2013 have all come against Alabama. Meanwhile, Alabama's Top 6 rated games have come against 4 different opponents.

Obviously the common denominator is Alabama.

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Auburn - Penn State apparently had very strong ratings.

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Yep. Auburn's highest rated regular season game NOT involving Alabama since 2013.

You can also attribute a lot to the fact it was played in prime time. The SEC only gets one primetime network game each season.... which is NUTS! Alabama vs. LSU has been the pick every season since 2011 except for Georgia-Bama one year and Georgia-Notre Dame another.

Auburn has had two ABC primetime games since 2019.... once against Oregon and last week vs. Penn State. Both did well in the ratings because they both featured all ranked opponents.... but a lot of those high ratings can be attributed to the fact they were played in prime time on a major network.

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LSU's Top 6 highest rated regular season games since 2013 have all been against Alabama.

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And what were the two teams ranked during those 6 games? That's pretty relevant. Also relevant is how much the ratings dropped when both weren't top ranked teams. Also relevant is what were Alabama's ratings prior to Saban's run. Like I said, ratings are very much predicated upon how good the two teams playing are. Notre Dame is probably the only program that can still draw pretty good ratings even when they suck or are mediocre.

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Alabama's Top 6 rated games have come against 4 different opponents.

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I'm going to guess they were all top 10 matchups too: LSU, Auburn, Georgia, and A&M

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Obviously the common denominator is Alabama.

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The common denominator is Alabama is basically always a top 5 team. When they play another team in the top 5 or 10, the game will get high ratings. When they play someone like Miss State, they don't because there is no interest in a matchup like that. And when they werent a perennial top 5 team, they weren't dominating the TV ratings