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Television audiences for college football remain strong as Texas’ dramatic comeback against Ohio State pushed broadcast numbers to new highs. The Saturday night thriller in Austin not only delivered an exciting finish on the field but also recorded record viewership for a Week 2 game.
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ABC averaged nearly 14 million viewers for the Ohio State–Texas matchup, which ended with the Longhorns rallying from a 20-point fourth-quarter deficit to win 24–23. Audience peaks reached about 16.4 million during the broadcast.
Those figures make the game the most-watched Week 2 college football contest on record and the biggest regular-season audience on an ESPN platform in a decade.
How this compares to last season
By contrast, last year’s Texas–Ohio State meeting in Columbus drew 16.6 million viewers on Fox and stood as the most-watched Week 1 game on record. That game — which featured Arch Manning in a high-profile start — finished with Ohio State winning 14–7 and a peak audience near 18.6 million.
Other marquee matchups and trends
Fox’s broadcast of Michigan’s 17–10 victory over Oklahoma in Ann Arbor averaged about 8.2 million viewers. That marks an increase of more than 31% compared with Fox’s Big Noon Saturday average in 2025, though it fell short of the 9.7 million viewers ABC logged for last year’s Michigan–Oklahoma game in Norman.
The most-watched Week 1 game this season was Notre Dame’s 41–13 win over Wisconsin, which pulled in roughly 8.1 million viewers on NBC. LSU’s highly anticipated opener — a 51–10 win over Clemson — averaged about 5.8 million viewers despite a two-hour weather delay before kickoff.
Last year’s LSU–Clemson matchup in South Carolina was one of three Week 1 games on ABC that exceeded 10 million viewers, underscoring the variability of audience sizes depending on matchup and timing.
Looking ahead
Attention now turns to another spotlight game: LSU at Ole Miss on ABC in primetime. The broadcast will feature Lane Kiffin returning to Oxford for his first game there as LSU’s head coach, adding narrative interest to a top-10 clash between No. 7 LSU and No. 8 Ole Miss.
