College football turned in some big numbers on ESPN/ABC last weekend, led by the Notre Dame-Michigan matchup in primetime. The first night game ever at Michigan Stadium averaged 7.5 million viewers on ESPN, marking the most-viewed telecast on all of cable TV for the week ending Sept. 11. That audience figure is up 8% from the same matchup last year, which aired in the 3:30pm ET window on NBC. The South Carolina-Georgia game Saturday afternoon also ranked among the top 40 most-viewed cable TV telecasts for the week with 3.9 million viewers. Meanwhile, the three NCAA football telecasts on FX and Versus last weekend each failed to top 1 million viewers. Versus' top game was Utah-USC on Saturday night with 749,000 viewers, while FX' game of the week featuring Nevada-Oregon in the 3:30pm window averaged 460,000 viewers. Listed below were the top five most-viewed college football telecasts last weekend, along with games airing on FX and Versus (Austin Karp, THE DAILY).
| MATCHUP | NET | START (ET) | U.S. RATING | VIEWERS (000) |
| Notre Dame-Michigan | ESPN | 8:17pm | 4.5 | 7,541 |
| Alabama-Penn State | ABC | 3:29pm | 3.9 | 6,083 |
| South Carolina-Georgia | ESPN | 4:26pm | 2.4 | 3,949 |
| Missouri-Arizona State | ESPN | 10:30pm | 1.7 | 2,536 |
| BYU-Texas | ESPN2 | 7:00pm | 1.3 | 2,096 |
| Utah-USC | Versus | 7:30pm | 0.4 | 749 |
| Nevada-Oregon | FX | 3:30pm | 0.3 | 460 |
| Air Force-TCU | Versus | 3:30pm | 0.1 | 195 |
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UNDER THE LIGHTS: USA TODAY's Michael Hiestand writes premier college football "is increasingly becoming a night game," as the sport has "managed to turn TV's slowest night into a showcase." Primetime Saturday football on ESPN and ABC last season "averaged about 8.2 million total viewers -- up 67% from 2005 -- while those channels' total viewers for games with the traditional 3:30 p.m. ET starts averaged 7.8 million viewers, up 29% over the same period." Notre Dame-Michigan Saturday "drew more viewers than any NBC Notre Dame home game in the last five years." Hiestand adds NBC "hops on the trend when Notre Dame hosts Southern California on Oct. 22, the network's prime-time Irish home game" (
USA TODAY, 9/16).
