Pretty impressive that our Friday night game on ESPN2 (!) outdrew Utah/Baylor on Saturday on ESPN AND UCLA on Saturday on CBS! It also goes (once again) to show how valuable it is to get off of BTN, as we outdrew Ohio State just because of what channel we were on. Interesting to compare it to the other ESPN2 games...
1.44 million for #20 Ole Miss at #24 Tulane (Saturday at 2:30 pm)
1.36 million for Illinois at Kansas (Friday at 6:30 pm)
294k for Purdue at Virginia Tech (Saturday at 11:00 am)
JMO, but that is an impressive rating for a Friday night on ESPN2. I will be really curious to see how PSU/Illinois does ratings-wise. This is our competition for the 11:00 am CST timeslot:
FOX: #7 Penn State at Illinois
ABC: #3 Florida State at Boston College
ESPN: #14 LSU at Mississippi State
ESPN2: Wake Forest at Old Dominion
BTN: Louisville vs. Indiana (Indianapolis, IN) or Georgia Southern at Wisconsin
FS1: North Dakota State at Boise State
SEC Network: #15 Kansas State at Missouri
CBSSN: Liberty at Buffalo
ESPNU: Iowa State at Ohio
We probably won't match CU/Nebraska's incredibly impressive 8.73 million from last week or Colorado/TCU's 7.26 million from the week before, but we should still draw a great audience given the lack of competition in that timeslot, a relatively big Illinois fan base and an absolutely massive PSU one. Point is that a lot of eyes will be on the Illini and Champaign!