The NFL continued to prove that it is king with a strong showing in the ratings department for its two Saturday afternoon games that went up against competition from the College Football Playoff.
There were 15.4 million viewers for the Baltimore Ravens win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Fox and 15.5 million viewers on NBC for the late afternoon matchup that saw the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Houston Texans, according to Sports Media Watch.
Saturday’s afternoon CFP first-round matchups aired on TNT, TBS and truTV with Texas’ win over Clemson bringing in 8.6 million viewers and Penn State knocking out SMU seeing 6.4 million. The two evening games — Ohio State topping Tennessee (14.3 million) and Notre Dame’s rout of Indiana (13.4 million) — each delivered strong numbers with no competition from the NFL.
Despite going head-to-head with two NFL games and the results ending up in blowouts, the CFP numbers in context were very good. Across the board, the four games averaged 10.6 million viewers with Tennessee-Ohio State and Indiana-Notre Dame delivering two of the three-largest audiences of the season for college football.
Clemson-Texas and SMU-Penn State were the two most-watched college football games that aired exclusively on cable this season.