Final Nielsen Ratings For Recent Sporting Events

The following presents final Nielsen ratings for recent sporting events (THE DAILY).

SEMESTER FINALS: The Big 12 Championship game, featuring Oklahoma-Missouri on Saturday night, drew a 32.5 rating (301,307 HHs) on KMBC-ABC in K. C., beating out the 29.4 for the Chargers-Chiefs game on KCTV-CBS on Sunday. The previous week, the Missouri-Kansas game drew a 38.6 HH rating, beating out the 31.8 for Raiders-Chiefs (K.C. STAR, 12/4)...The SEC Championship on CBS, featuring LSU-Tennessee, was up 31.1% from last year's 4.5/8 for Florida-Arkansas (CBS)....Versus earned a 0.2 national rating for its coverage of the Cal-Stanford game last Saturday, translating into 231,967 viewers. The game earned a 3.3 in the S.F.-Oakland-San Jose market, up 32% from Cal’s previous two-game average on Versus this season, and up 127% from Stanford-USC, the Cardinal’s only other game on the net this season (Versus)....The Univ. of Hawaii had two of the four top-rated games on ESPN2 this year, with two coming in the final two weeks of the regular season. The Washington-Hawaii game last Saturday earned a 2.0 coverage rating (1.96 million HHs), despite starting at 11:30pm ET (HONOLULU ADVERTISER, 12/6).

HOCKEY: The Red Wings-Canadiens game earned a 4.7 in Detroit on Tuesday night, making Versus the top-rated cable net in the market from 7:30-10:00pm ET. The 4.7 also marks the highest Detroit market rating ever on Versus for a regular-season game. The previous high was this season’s opening-night game against the Ducks, which earned a 4.6. After four games, Red Wings games on Versus are averaging a 4.2 in Detroit, up 94% from their ’06-07 regular-season average of a 2.2 (Versus)....Last Friday’s Coyotes-Blackhawks game earned a 1.2 rating on CSN Chicago, up from an 0.8 for the season’s first home telecast against the Red Wings on November 11 (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 12/4).