The move to supersize the College Football Playoff may be about as welcome as the apocryphal razor blade lurking inside a caramel apple, but if this season’s TV ratings are any indication, it’s not hard to see why ESPN was so eager to expand the field.
According to Nielsen, the SEC all but owns our fall Saturdays, with the conference boasting seven of the top 10 most-watched teams (and three of the upper five). At the head of the list are the beleaguered Texas Longhorns, which through the first seven weeks of the season have averaged 8.40 million viewers per window. Since defecting from the Big 12 in 2024, the transplants have been a massive TV draw, thanks in large part to the ongoing fascination with Arch Manning.
While the rangy quarterback may not live up to all the hype—even if you leave Uncle Peyton out of the equation, the exploits of his forebears make for a daunting legacy—Manning has made Texas a can’t-miss game day destination. After rallying from a 20-point fourth-quarter deficit, the Longhorns’ 24-23 interconference victory over Ohio State in Week 2 captured the biggest audience of the college football campaign thus far, as ABC averaged 13.99 million viewers.
Manning & Co. also featured in the fifth and sixth most-watched outings to date, as Texas’s 27-24 loss to Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry averaged 9.82 million viewers, while a 20-17 nailbiter over Tennessee in Week 4 delivered another 9.75 million viewers. Both games aired on ABC; in fact, ESPN’s broadcast sibling now accounts for eight of the season’s 10 top TV turnouts, a tally that includes four Saturday Night Football windows.
The only other network to claim some real estate for itself is Fox, which leveraged its Big Noon Saturday platform for a pair of top-10 showings. Last Saturday’s Ohio State-Indiana bruising scared up 10.38 million viewers, good for fourth on the list, while Oklahoma-Michigan drew 8.22 million viewers in Week 2.
It’s probably worth noting that the latter Fox broadcast featured an SEC vs. Big Ten matchup, which stands to reason. Per Nielsen, the only games among the top 10 that did not include an SEC team were the aforementioned Buckeyes-Hoosiers showdown and ABC’s primetime presentation of Notre Dame-BYU.
NBC remains just outside of ABC and Fox’s inner circle, as its broadcast of Wisconsin’s opener against Notre Dame ranks 11th with 7.42 million viewers. CBS is at a greater remove from the action; its top game thus far is the Week 5 Ohio State-Iowa blowout, which averaged 5.97 million viewers in the 3:30 p.m. ET window that once housed CBS’ SEC slate. (CBS fumbled the bag with its longstanding conference partner after the 2023 season wrapped, bringing an end to a 27-year arrangement.)
Following back-to-back defeats—last week’s 27-24 home loss to an unranked Florida knocked the ‘Horns all the way down to No. 19 on the AP Top 25—Texas may not be as reliable a draw from here on out. Ohio State has the weekend off, but the 6-1 Buckeyes (7.46 million viewers per game) are poised to knock Texas off its Nielsen throne with a Halloween matchup against USC and the annual blockbuster against Michigan (Nov. 28). After Ohio State on the list are a pair of SEC teams (Oklahoma with 6.27 million viewers per game and Alabama at 6.24 million), while Indiana closes out the top five (6.03 million). But for the Wolverines, which are holding on to the No. 10 slot, the rest of the most-watched list is all SEC: Tennessee, Georgia, LSU and Ole Miss.
ABC’s SEC-fueled dominance over the ratings charts may be temporally agnostic—three of its most-watched outings have kicked off at around 3:35 p.m. ET, while another big performer aired at noon ET—but the Saturday Night Football window is the college game’s top attraction by far. Through Oct. 17, SNF is the third most-popular primetime program on linear TV, averaging just shy of 9 million viewers per week. Only NBC’s Sunday Night Football (22.43 million viewers) and ESPN/ABC’s Monday Night Football (19.27 million) are drawing a larger audience; by way of comparison, the nearest any non-sports property gets to Saturday Night Football is CBS’ 60 Minutes, which is averaging 8.11 million viewers through the first five episodes of Season 59.
ABC’s Saturday night showcase is also the third-biggest draw among adults 18-49. Per Nielsen, SNF is currently averaging 2.96 million members of the dollar demo per week, putting it leagues ahead of the primetime broadcast average for non-sports programming (510,553). Thus, if the Dallas Cowboys are a must-buy for NFL advertisers, the SEC is similarly indispensable for marketers looking to make a splash in front of a college football audience.
As much as Americans don’t seem all that fired up about a 24-team CFP field—this week, 82% of respondents to a survey conducted by The Athletic said they were opposed to the expansion—the people with the requisite money/power don’t really give a tinker’s damn about what the fans think … so quit yer bellyaching. At some point, the guys pulling the strings decided their default response for just about everything would be to crib from Judge Elihu Smails (“You’ll get nothing and like it!”), and we just sort of have to live with all that surplus nothing. Try to keep that in mind the next time your kid drags you to some terrible Star Wars thing that nobody asked for.
But it’s not just us ham-and-eggers who aren’t enchanted by the ongoing suboptimization of everything that used to serve as a respite from the gnawing horrors of quotidian existence. Big ups to Michael Bratton, aka SEC Mike, who hurled a few verbal thunderbolts at CFP overlords during a recent on-air visit with ESPN’s Paul Finebaum.
“We’re going to put half of the SEC in the playoff,” Bratton groused. “I think it’s disgraceful. I don’t think they consulted the players—I know they didn’t! I know they didn’t consult the fans. And I don’t know who this is for.”
Finebaum tried to temper Bratton’s fury (“Hold up. Did you not get the ESPN talking points for this interview?” he cracked), but his guest was just getting warmed up.
“I don’t even know what ESPN’s getting out of it!” Bratton replied. “I mean, I get more inventory, but you’re losing a championship game. And it doesn’t seem like there’s a massive difference with the money. I just…”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I understand the money yet,” Finebaum said. “Uh, I’m sure somebody will explain that to us.”
“I don’t think they will, Paul,” Bratton laughed. “Just takin’ a wild guess.”
As of this writing, Bratton remains among the living, so it’s apparent that ESPN will make concessions for at least some on-air dissent. But if he’s still looking for answers as to why Bristol may seem to favor stuffing the postseason ballots with SEC programs, the Nielsen numbers are as good a place to start as any.