Saturday’s donnybrook at the Horseshoe may not have scared up the massive numbers that last year’s Ohio State-Michigan showdown delivered, but Fox’s broadcast of the 120th installment of The Game still ranks as the college football season’s second-biggest TV draw.
According to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the Wolverines’ 13-10 upset over the Buckeyes averaged 12.3 million viewers in Fox’s Big Noon Saturday window, which marked a 35% decline compared to the 2023 game (19.1 million). The hype for this year’s outing was undermined by what looked to be an unpromising matchup; at 6-5, Michigan was a 20.5-point underdog heading into its road trip to No. 2 Ohio State (10-1).
The TV turnout for Saturday’s big rivalry game was the lowest in seven years.
By way of comparison, last year’s broadcast featured a No. 3 Wolverines (-3) squad taking on the No. 2 Buckeyes in Ann Arbor. With a suspended Jim Harbaugh riding the pine, Michigan secured a 30-24 win over its Big Ten foes, in what would prove to be the most-watched college football game of 2023. The Game was also the 58th-biggest draw on the TV dial last year, beating out the 95th Academy Awards by some 310,000 viewers.
Last year’s meeting stands as the second most-watched installment of the series in the modern Nielsen era. ABC in 2006 notched the biggest draw with 21 million viewers, as the top-ranked Buckeyes outlasted the No. 2 Wolverines 42-39 in an epic that is often referred to as “the Game of the Century.”
In collecting its fourth straight victory against Ohio State, Michigan demolished the Buckeyes’ chances of a return engagement in the Big Ten championship game. Instead, fans will have the chance to feast on No. 1 Oregon versus No. 3 Penn State this Saturday on CBS.
Through Saturday, ABC can lay claim bragging rights to the biggest college football broadcast of the season, as the Oct. 19 Georgia-Texas game averaged 13.2 million viewers. Powered by its new SEC contract, ABC has aired five of the top 10 broadcasts thus far, a roster that includes a cross-conference Big Ten-SEC matchup in the Sept. 1 USC-LSU opener. Standalone SEC games account for 10 of the year’s top 20 college football outings, while a clutch of hybrid battles gives the conference a leg up in 15 of the top 20. Meanwhile, the Big Ten participated in five of the biggest 20 draws, or seven if you include two interconference matchups with the SEC.
The ACC popped up in two of the season’s most-watched college games (Clemson-Georgia and Miami-Florida), while Notre Dame’s Aug. 31 win over Texas A&M marks the only top 20 appearance for an indie.
The Big 12, which alongside the Mountain West and (possibly) the ACC, will send just one representative to the expanded College Football Playoff tourney, finished just out of the money, as Fox’s Nov. 23 Colorado-Kansas broadcast is currently the season’s 21st-biggest draw.
The SEC and Big Ten, meanwhile, are both expected to have four member schools land in the newfangled CFP bracket. While realignment has helped make the postseason even more unpredictable than it’s ever been, the Power Five (er, Four) superstructure has very much given rise to a duopoly.
Back in Columbus, the Michigan-Ohio State broadcast ended in fisticuffs after one of the Wolverines attempted to pull a Baker Mayfield in the center of the Buckeyes’ midfield logo. The brawl began as Fox’s Jenny Taft was conducting a postgame interview with Michigan players; when the dust (and pepper spray) finally settled, both teams would be fined $100,000 for their involvement in the fracas. In a statement, the Big Ten said the extracurricular activities were in violation of “fundamental elements of sportsmanship such as respect and civility.”
Michigan running back Kalel Mullings got in one last dig at his adversaries before Fox threw to Tucson for Arizona State-Arizona. “At the end of the day, some people got to learn how to lose, man,” Mullings told Taft. “You can’t be fighting this stuff just because you lost the game. All that fighting, we had 60 minutes, we had four quarters to do all that fighting and now people want to talk and fight. That’s wrong. It’s bad for the game. Classless in my opinion. People got to be better.”
The next stop for Mullings and the 7-5 Wolverines may be the Music City Bowl, where they’d be a good fit for a 9-3 Missouri. Ohio State, meanwhile, may host Tennessee in the first round of the playoff, with a victory pitting the Buckeyes against the one-seed Oregon in the quarterfinals. The bracket will be revealed Sunday at noon ET on ESPN.
