Update: Notre Dame defeated Penn State, 27-24, to book its place in the national championship game.
As Notre Dame and Penn State look to claim their first national championship since the Reagan administration—the Irish last won the title just 18 days before the Gipper left the White House in 1989, while the Nittany Lions claimed their second natty two years earlier—ESPN will be blessed with what amounts to an open field. In the absence of any significant national sports competition and with broadcasters locked into winter hibernation mode, the cable network and its various spinoff channels have an opportunity to deliver an audience commensurate with the scope of tonight’s matchup.
While casual fans and explosive-offense junkies may tap out early (not for nothing did the Vegas books set the over/under at a miserly 44.5 points), the stakes are far too high to pass up on the inaugural semifinal of the 12-team College Football Playoff era. Besides, there’s not much else on TV tonight; aside from the Coastal Athletic Conference men’s hoops throwdown between Elon and William & Mary, followed by a Conference USA men’s hoops matchup between Liberty and Sam Houston State, both on CBS Sports Network, the playoff is the only sporting event on the dial.
And best of luck finding something else to gawp at on one of the Big Four nets. Fox is the lone broadcaster that’ll be trotting out first-run episodes in primetime, and those two hours of entertainment programming aren’t likely to steal share from ESPN. Undoubtedly, you’ve seen the tune-in spots for that new Denis Leary army sitcom, as Fox has run the sprockets off the teasers during its NFL coverage; with one airing under its belt, Going Dutch stands as TV’s lowest-rated comedy.
Let’s just get it out of the way: A close game gets Bristol to 25 million viewers. The promise of seeing one of these historically great programs earn a shot at emerging from the desert after nearly 40 years of wandering should pay off handsomely for ESPN’s advertisers, who are paying more than $1 million for each 30-second slice of in-game inventory.
Aside from all the redemption narratives that are about to get a workout tonight in Miami, the Notre Dame-Penn State showdown has been set up nicely by last week’s quarterfinals. If the raw viewership data may not suggest that Nielsen’s ratings-gathering gear will melt down under the strain of counting the house—the 24-hour Sugar Bowl delay certainly didn’t do ESPN any favors—the consumption figures tell another story. Per Inscape data, ESPN owned the airwaves last week, commanding a 10.4% audience share. By way of comparison, the next cable network ranked (Fox News Channel) took fifth place with 5.8% share.
To date, the Rose Bowl stands as the most-watched CFP telecast of the cycle, with Ohio State’s 41-21 New Year’s romp over top-seeded Oregon serving up 21.1 million viewers. Inexplicably enough, several news outlets hopped all over those Jan. 1 deliveries, which fell shy of last season’s Alabama-Michigan blockbuster. The Wolverines’ overtime victory averaged 27.7 million viewers and was the most-watched college football game of 2024.
But talk about an apples-to-Fiona Apple comparison; Jim Harbaugh’s squad’s big win over Nick Saban’s charges was a semifinal. To assess the turnout for Buckeyes-Ducks in a negative light based on the year-over-year performance is about as goofy as Coach Saban’s scripted interactions with the Aflac duck.
For what it’s worth, Ohio State-Texas is no slouch either, and Friday night’s semifinal should get a bonus lift by way of elevated out-of-home deliveries. If the Longhorns can prevent Will Howard from bombing them back into the Paleolithic Age—which is to say, if they manage to make a close game of it—ESPN will be rewarded with another massive TV turnout.
Back in the days when the national champion was determined by fiat—Penn State got absolutely hosed in 1995—relatively little attention was paid to college football’s TV deliveries. Nielsen obsessives usually could dig up the household ratings in USA Today, although then as now, those figures didn’t provide much guidance as to how many people actually tuned into a given broadcast.
If there was relatively little to be gleaned from a glance at a “15.3” or a “16.4” set in an eye-wateringly tiny newspaper font, the ad dollars were similarly undersized—at least compared to today’s market. No matter which teams punch their ticket to Atlanta, ESPN is set up for a tidy payday, as its last available in-game units in the championship telecast fetched more than $2 million a throw.
(This story has been updated with the final result.)
