TV ratings came out this week, and unfortunately we cannot really know when Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota or Northwestern drew as far as viewers, as they all played on BTN or BTN Alternate at the same time as another game. You can make educated guesses, of course, but nothing concrete. Here are the Big Ten games, as well as those of future Big Ten members:
1) 10.03 million for #19 Colorado at #10 Oregon (2:30 pm on ABC) ... Deion ratings show rolls on!
2) 9.98 million for #6 Ohio State at #9 Notre Dame (6:30 pm on NBC)
3) 2.75 million for #24 Iowa at #7 Penn State (6:30 pm on CBS)
4) 2.63 million for #5 USC at Arizona State (9:30 pm on FOX)
5) 1.94 million for Rutgers at #2 Michigan (11:00 am on BTN)
6) 1.32 million for #22 UCLA at #11 Utah (2:30 pm on FOX)
7) 1.24 million for Maryland at Michigan State (2:30 pm on NBC)
8) 1.19 million for Wisconsin at Purdue (Friday at 6:00 pm on FS1)
9) 1.16 million for Cal at #8 Washington (9:30 pm on ESPN)
10) 727k for Louisiana Tech at Nebraska OR Florida Atlantic at Illinois (2:30 pm on BTN)
11) 378k for Minnesota at Northwestern OR Akron at Indiana (6:30 pm on BTN)
A couple of interesting notes:
- Colorado remains an absolute phenom ... averaging 8.83 million viewers through three games. It will be interesting what happens to the Deion hype if they sort of collapse after the Oregon beatdown, but I suspect their ratings will remain high, especially given that stat that CU viewership is up a crazy percentage in predominantly Black households.
- Interesting that Illinois/PSU drew 3.22 million while Iowa/PSU drew 2.75 million in primetime on CBS. Iowa/PSU had to compete with OSU/Notre Dame, so that probably made a difference, but Illinois/PSU shared a window with LSU and Florida State, so that is also some stiff competition from two games.
- Speaking of Illinois/PSU, our 3.22 million was significantly better than anything the network had this week ... can't always have the Buffs! USC/ASU pulled 2.63 million, Oklahoma/Cincinnati pulled 2.17 million, Oregon State/WSU pulled 1.48 million and UCLA/Utah pulled 1.32 million.
- Just another example of staying off of ESPNU ... Mizzou hosted Memphis in St. Louis for its grand triumphant return to the Dome at America's Center in front of 45k fans in actual attendance, and the broadcast reached a whopping 181k due to ESPNU being a ratings graveyard. They were almost doubled up by Georgia Tech/Wake Forest on The CW, and Air Force/San Jose State had three times the viewers on FS1.
I acknowledge I am a way bigger nerd about this than most, but I am bummed our game vs. Purdue will be on Peacock, and therefore (to my knowledge) the ratings won't be made available. I will, however, be really curious to see what we can pull on a Friday night at FS1 vs. Nebraska in two weeks. The rest of our games are all TBD, so our TV/time slots will depend on how much we are winning!