It was a Week 1 unlike any other in college football, and everybody seemed to benefit, including Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff.
This was maybe the biggest weekend we’ve ever seen in the battle for college football pregame supremacy. On one side, ESPN and College GameDay saluted Lee Corso in his final episode before retirement. On the other side, Fox welcomed Dave Portnoy (and all the drama that came with him) to Big Noon Kickoff for the first time.
ESPN said goodbye to Lee Corso in epic fashion as the iconic 90-year-old college football legend put on his last piece of headgear for his final episode of College GameDay. The occasion could not have been scripted any better. Corso brought his career full circle by putting on the Brutus Buckeye head for his final headgear pick, just as he did for his first one so many years ago. And he did it in the middle of the field at the Horseshoe with 100,000+ people watching on and the Ohio State marching band spelling out his name in tribute. If that wasn’t enough, Corso went perfect with his picks, and all of his former teams won on Saturday.
Unsurprisingly, it was the most-watched episode of GameDay ever. The final numbers came in at an average of 4 million viewers. In addition, Corso’s final headgear pick, showcased on both ESPN and Fox in a classy touch by all involved, reached an astounding 9 million viewers.
But Fox has plenty to celebrate with the season debut of Big Noon Kickoff as well. Fox reportedly earned an average of 2 million viewers for the entire program, but was definitely hyped up about the success of the final hour as the show moved into the stadium (sans Portnoy).
BNK drew a very impressive 3.8 million viewers for the final hour of the show. Overall, it registered as the third most-watched show in program history and the highest ever outside of the Ohio State-Michigan game, according to Fox.
Ratings were up all over the board for college football, both in pregame shows and in the games themselves. Fox led the way with the highly anticipated CFP semifinal rematch between #1 Texas and #3 Ohio State. The Buckeyes won a defensive slugfest 14-7 in a game that drew an astonishing 16.6 million viewers, the most for a Week 1 game on record.
Not to be outdone over the weekend, ESPN also set Week 1 highs with three games surpassing 10 million viewers – Miami-Notre Dame, Florida State-Alabama, and Clemson-LSU.
Sports ratings are expected to continue rising this football season, thanks to measurement changes from Nielsen. However, those big ratings also extended to the college football pregame shows, where the storylines may have been just as prominent as those for the games themselves.
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