College Football Playoff viewership dragged down by blowouts

Viewership for the first round of the College Football Playoff hit both record highs and record lows.

On ESPN, Alabama-Oklahoma and Miami-Texas A&M became the most- and second-most-watched first-round College Football Playoff games on record. Friday night, Alabama-Oklahoma averaged 14.9 million viewers. On Saturday afternoon, the Miami-Texas A&M game averaged 14.8 million viewers. That was good enough for the fifth- and sixth-most-watched college football games this season.

The blowouts involving Group of Five teams on TNT fared far worse. Facing the NFL, Tulane-Ole Miss averaged 6.2 million viewers, while James Madison-Oregon averaged 4.4 million viewers.

Against the CFP, the NFL saw significant increases from last year. Packers-Browns averaged 21.34 million viewers, up 39% from the comparable window last year. Eagles-Commanders averaged 15.46 million viewers, up 8% from last year.

The ’25-’26 #CFBPlayoff First Round delivered 9.9M avg. viewers via ABC/ESPN & @TNTSportsUS

🏈 @AlabamaFTBL–@OU_Football | 14.9M viewers
🏈 @CanesFootball–@AggieFootball | 14.8M
🏈 @GreenWaveFB–@OleMissFB | 6.2M
🏈 @JMUFootball–@oregonfootball | 4.4M pic.twitter.com/S7y1Ng1kE7

— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) December 23, 2025

While last year the two College Football Playoff games on TNT were still the most-watched cable-exclusive games of the year to that point, that was not the case this year. TCU-North Carolina in Week 1 on ESPN averaged 6.6 million viewers.

The games were still easily good enough to be the most-watched college football games on TNT this year. In its first year carrying Big 12 games, TNT did not average more than 1 million viewers for any regular-season game.

Overall, the first round averaged 9.9 million viewers across all four games, down 9% from last year. The difference from last year is likely greater when factoring in Big Data, Nielsen’s new viewership methodology introduced in September, which generally increases sports viewership.

Thanks to a new memorandum of understanding, TNT is extremely unlikely to air two Group of Five teams next year. The new agreement guarantees that conference champions from Power 4 conferences will receive auto-bids to the College Football Playoff. This year, Duke won the ACC but did not make the College Football Playoff because it was ranked lower than James Madison. A second Group of Five member would only be able to get in as an at-large.