CFP First round TV:

Game	Approx. TV Viewers
Alabama vs. Oklahoma	14.9 million viewers (Friday)Â
Miami vs. Texas A&M	14.8 million viewers (Saturday)Â
Tulane vs. Ole Miss	6.2 million viewers (Saturday, afternoon)Â
James Madison vs. Oregon	~4.4 million viewers (Saturday, evening)Â

The Ole Miss and Oregon home games on TNT, not ESPN.

And, both were programmed opposite NFL games which always draw higher ratings. The Ducks vs Jame Madison was opposite Packers vs Bears.

The other two games did not have NFL competition for eyeballs.

These numbers are different than the post...but it refers to ESPN GameDay, not the actual game itself.

Here's the game viewership graphic....

TNT & TruTV.

These ratings/viewership numbers makes sense.

There's no way the only thing keeping the Oregon/Ole Miss games from ~14M viewers was TNT and an NFL game.

Had to look at Oregon's biggest games during the year (I was rather surprised):

• Oregon v. PSU - 8.5M

• Oregon v. Indiana - 5.6M (this one is surprising; tosu v. Illinois almost matched this)

• Oregon v. Iowa - 5.4M

• Oregon v. USC - 5.4M

• Oregon v. Washington - 4.3M (this one also blows my mind; see below)

Mississippi total population = ~3M ------ Combined Oregon and Washington population = ~12M

And the Ole Miss v. Mississippi game got 1M more viewers . . . that's crazy to me. As I've always said, "Fans in the south don't love football more than fans on the west coast. They just have more people that love football in the South than the west coast."

Late in the regular season, these were the eyeball stats for West teams:

8.50Million—Oregon-Penn St (NBC)

5.59M—Oregon-Indiana (CBS)

5.43M - Oregon-USC (CBS)

5.37M—Oregon-Iowa (CBS)

5.23M—Washington-Ohio St (CBS)

4.64M—USC-Notre Dame (NBC)

4.32M—Washington-Michigan (FOX)

4.30M—USC-Michigan (NBC)

4.27M – Oregon-Washington (CBS)

Even Ohio St vs Washington was not that much higher than Oregon vs Washington. In comparison to other games, a major factor here is network and kickoff time. These games were heavy to CBS coverage, rather than ABC/ESPN(multi). ABC/ESPN promotes the hell out of their SEC games, has GameDay, has attractive time slots, and a fanbase which loves watching Goober play Cletus.

NFL viewership during Ole Miss and Oregon games:

In the opening contest, 15.46 million people watched the Eagles take hold of the NFC East crown against divisional rival Washington, a game that was close until it wasn’t.

At night, it was more of the same: a whopping 21.34 million watched the Bears take down the Packers in one of the more entertaining regular-season games of the year. Caleb Williams and company came back in the final minutes, aided by an onside kick, to push the game into overtime before throwing a deep shot into the endzone for a dramatic walk-off victory.

Both NFL games aired on Fox during the college broadcasts on TNT.

To me, this just highlights why the TV networks will want to push the G5 schools out the playoffs or limit them to one spot max sooner rather than later.

Anticipated viewership is the reason ESPN farmed out the G5 games to TNT.

A real playoff game, in a PO managed by the NCAA and not Mickey Mouse, gave us a terrific PO game where the tickets to get in cost more than any ticket for an FBS 1st round game, a Brawl of the Wild rematch, Montana State 48 - Montana 23, in a game closer than the final score.

All of Dan's beefs concerning this Bowl Extravaganza are spot on.

Perhaps OBD will 'win' both the FBS and FCS POs?

GO Montana State!