ith a spot in the Big Ten championship, and a possible spot in the College Football Playoff, on the line, the stakes were sky high in this year’s edition of the Ohio State-Michigan game. The matchup traditionally draws one of the largest audiences of the college football season prior to Conference Championship Weekend, and this year was no exception.
Per ShowBuzz Daily, this year’s clash between the Buckeyes and Wolverines, a cathartic 42-27 Michigan win, drew a whopping 15.893 million viewers on Fox. To the shock of absolutely no one, that’s the most watched college football game of this season by a significant margin – the previous high game a month earlier, when Michigan State’s win over Michigan drew 9.289 million viewers on Fox.
Interestingly, that game has already fallen to the third most-watched game of the season. Saturday’s four overtime Iron Bowl drew 10.369 million viewers, the best audience of the year for CBS. Another two games this fall topped the eight million viewer mark – Georgia-Clemson way back in Week 1 drew 8.863 million viewers for ABC, and Texas A&M’s upset win over Alabama drew 8.334 million viewers on CBS.
Next up is Championship Weekend. Two games air on Friday, with CBS Sports Network having the Conference USA title game between Western Kentucky and UTSA and ABC airing the Oregon-Utah Pac-12 championship. The early window features both the Big 12 title game (Baylor-Oklahoma State, ABC) and MAC championship (Kent State-Northern Illinois, ESPN), while the mid-afternoon window is headlined by the SEC title game (Georgia-Alabama, CBS) and also features the Mountain West championship (Utah State-San Diego State, Fox), the Sun Belt title game (Appalachian State-Louisiana, ESPN), and the vastly important American title game (Houston-Cincinnati, ABC). In primetime, Fox has the Big Ten title game (Michigan-Iowa) and ABC has the ACC championship (Pitt-Wake Forest).
This is going to be a fun weekend.
