Michigan State's last-second 17-14 win over undefeated Ohio State on Saturday afternoon earned a 7.0 overnight rating on ABC, making it the highest-rated college football game of the year across all networks. The game also marked ABC's best 3:30pm ET game window since '06, which featured undefeated Michigan against undefeated Ohio State. Saturday's game was up 94% over comparable regional coverage last year (Boston College-Florida State or Wisconsin-Iowa). Michigan State-Ohio State also was the most-streamed game of the week on WatchESPN, with 482,000 unique viewers. Columbus led all markets with a 42.0 local rating, followed by Dayton, Cleveland and Detroit (THE DAILY). NBCSPORTS.com's Zach Barnett wrote the ratings mark will "likely last all of one week until ABC's broadcast of Michigan-Ohio State this Saturday shatters it to fractions." The Big Ten "now holds the mark for highest-rated noon game and highest-rated game of any time this season, and both were on ESPN networks" (NBCSPORTS.com, 11/22).
A SOMBER MOMENT: NBC Sports Coordinating Producer Rob Hyland said that Doug Flutie "had the option of not doing" Saturday night's Boston College-Notre Dame game on NBCSN after losing both parents on the same day last week. SI.com's Richard Deitsch noted the game marked the "final Notre Dame broadcast for the year for NBC, and the last thing NBC Sports wanted to do was put any pressure on Flutie." But Flutie "wanted to do the broadcast," so Hyland "formulated a plan with Flutie and play-by-play announcer Dan Hicks about how to approach discussing his parents’ death on-air." Hyland: "What I said to Doug was, ‘Doug, we will be addressing this early but not at the very top of the telecast so it’s not the first thing out of our mouth,’ I also didn’t want to rehearse it. I told them that Dan will get you to the news of your family and why you wanted to be here. We never rehearsed it but Doug knew that question would be asked on-camera prior to kickoff." Deitsch noted during the pregame show, at 7:24pm, NBCSN "acknowledged the moment of silence at Fenway Park" for Flutie's parents. Hyland said that he "wanted to approach Flutie’s story as part of documenting the event, so they covered the moment of silence 'the way the fan in the stadium experienced it and the way Doug’s family would have wanted it done'” (SI.com, 11/22).
