A softer part of the college football season has resulted in a smaller increase in viewership compared to last year.

Nielsen said this week that college football viewership across all networks through 11 weeks is up 2% compared to last year, when comparing data from the new Big Data + Panel measurement process to similar figures from 2024.

That college football comparison from this year to last using the Big Data + Panel methodology is the result of additional research from Nielsen, as standard year-over-year comparisons for other programming involve prior, panel-based data from 2024. 

The 2% lift for college football, however, is down sharply from a 10.5% gain seen in early October. A key reason for the more recent retreat is a heavily front-loaded schedule this year, including a massive Week 1 matchup between defending national champion Ohio State and then–No. 1 Texas. That clash averaged 16.6 million viewers, and is still the most-watched game of this season.

A key viewership test will arrive later this month and in early December, as the latter stretch of the season will include the revival of the famed Ohio State–Michigan rivalry and major conference championship games. 

Another notable factor is a marked variance between the most popular college teams among viewers, and those at the top of the Associated Press Top 25 rankings. According to Nielsen, the five most-watched teams this season for average viewership are:

• Alabama: 7.865 million 
• Tennessee: 7.032 million 
• Georgia: 6.996 million 
• Texas: 6.479 million 
• LSU: 6.420 million 

Alabama, however, is ranked No. 4 in the AP poll, while Tennessee is No. 23, Georgia is No. 5, Texas is No. 10, and unranked LSU is mired in controversy.

Top-ranked Ohio State is seventh with an average of 5.752 million viewers per game, while No. 2 Indiana does not show up in Nielsen’s top 15.

Two sports media brands used for many years by NBC Sports are making comebacks, but in a dramatically changing corporate structure, the pair will have relatively little to do with each other. 

The Comcast-owned NBC Sports said this week that it will bring back the NBC Sports Network, the linear network it previously operated from 2012 to 2021, with the move confirming a plan discussed extensively this past summer. The cable channel will debut Nov. 17, initially with YouTube TV following a recent carriage agreement, and shortly on Comcast’s own Xfinity. 

The network will serve in many respects as a linear counterpart to Peacock, offering much of the same sports programming that the streaming service does, including NBA and WNBA games, Premier League soccer matches, Big Ten and Notre Dame football, college basketball, two golf majors, and content from a soon-to-be-announced rights deal with Major League Baseball. 

“The new NBC Sports Network gives pay-TV customers a seamless way to enjoy the wide range of sports in our portfolio,” said NBCUniversal president of platform distribution and partnerships Matt Schnaars.

Across the Aisle

The other legacy sports media brand being resurrected, meanwhile, is USA Sports. A brand originally dating to the 1970s, USA Sports will be the sports moniker for Versant, the company being spun off from Comcast. Versant will control most of the cable networks previously held by Comcast, including USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC (becoming MS Now on Saturday), and Golf Channel. The spin-off originally unveiled a year ago is set for completion early next year.

USA Sports will have more than 10,000 hours of live sports events per year, including content from NASCAR, the PGA Tour, Premier League, WWE, and the WNBA, among others. This week, the network also signed a rights deal with a rebuilt Pac-12 Conference. That content will air on either USA Network, Golf Channel, or CNBC.

The two announcements occurred within a day of each other this week, leading to some marketplace confusion—particularly since some sports content that had aired on the prior NBCSN transferred over to USA Network after the 2021 NBCSN shutdown. 

The new NBCSN and USA Sports, however, will be separate entities and exist under separate parent companies. Despite the separation, though, there will be some crossover and collaboration between the two. NBCUniversal will sell advertising for Versant for the next two annual upfront cycles, while there is also a joint rights agreement for NBCUniversal and Versant with the USGA, and some Olympics-related content controlled by NBC Sports will air on USA Network.

The Patriots have definitively moved on from the last vestiges of the Tom Brady–Bill Belichick era into a dynamic new one as the NFL’s team second-year quarterback and first-year head coach are quickly reshaping the league. 

New England won its eighth straight game Thursday night, beating the Jets at home 27–14 and becoming the first NFL team with nine victories this season. The Patriots’ resurgence is one of the league’s dominant storylines this year, and it marks a major turnaround for the six-time Super Bowl winners after three straight non-playoff seasons—the last two sinking to ugly 13-loss campaigns. The current winning streak matches their longest since 2019, Tom Brady’s final season with the team.

Fueling the rapid turnaround is 23-year-old quarterback Drake Maye. Drafted last year from North Carolina with the No. 3 pick, Maye has elevated from an uneven rookie campaign to one this season where he is now the betting favorite to win the NFL Most Valuable Player award, topping veteran stars such as Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford and Colts running back Jonathan Taylor. Maye was showered with “MVP” chants from fans Thursday as he closed out the win over the Jets. 

“He’s playing at an elite level right now,” Patriots tackle Will Campbell said of Maye. “I’m biased, but I think he’s the best player in the NFL. There’s no game that we’re out of when we have him.”

Like some other young standouts in the NFL, Maye is far outperforming his current contract, but the disparity is even more pronounced given he’s a quarterback. Still in the second season of a four-year, rookie-level deal, Maye will earn an average annual value of $9.2 million through the 2027 season. While that’s the current league scale for his professional tenure and draft position, it’s also a mere fraction of top NFL quarterback salaries that now routinely exceed $50 million. 

There is a team option in Maye’s deal for the 2028 season, and he is not due to become an unrestricted free agent until 2029. 

Sideline Matters

The other key element of the New England revival is head coach Mike Vrabel. A standout linebacker for the Patriots in the early 2000s, during the first part of the Patriots dynasty, Vrabel returned to the Patriots early this year amid a period of marked turbulence and reappraisal for the franchise. 

Brady has moved on to the Raiders, a team where he’s a part-owner, and he has his broadcasting position for Fox Sports. Former head coach Bill Belichick had an ugly end to his tenure in New England, and he has experienced plenty more turbulence during his current stint in North Carolina. Patriots owner Robert Kraft had looked indecisive, too, as the team sought to rebuild. 

The choice to move on from Jerod Mayo—another former Patriots star and the initial designated successor to Belichick—after just a year and bring back Vrabel after his prior challenges in Tennessee and Cleveland is paying dividends far quicker than expected. Like Maye, Vrabel is the current betting favorite for NFL Coach of the Year. 

“[Vrabel] has done an amazing job. Even just coming in from [organized team activities], he stood in here, told us what we’re going to do, about building a team, building connections, and getting close,” said Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez. “As not just a former player but a great player, he knows how to get people going.”

The Patriots have a rather soft schedule the rest of the way, with a Dec. 14 home game against the Bills standing as the team’s toughest remaining game. There is at least one primetime contest remaining for New England, a Dec. 1 Monday Night Football game against the Giants, but it’s easy to see the team potentially getting flexed into additional top broadcast slots.

As Fox and CBS have seen some positive momentum in college football TV ratings during the Disney–YouTube TV carriage dispute, the networks are drawing the short end of the stick this weekend due to the Big Ten’s complicated media-rights contract.

The conference’s best game of the week, No. 21 Iowa at No. 17 USC, won’t be televised on any of the three networks—Fox, CBS, and NBC—that are paying the Big Ten a combined $1 billion annually through 2030. Instead, the matchup will be broadcast by Big Ten Network.

The curious move is a result of some unique contractual obligations for the Big Ten’s 18 teams, a broadcast network source told Front Office Sports.

A Big Ten spokesperson provided the following statement to FOS: “The conference and its media partners operate within an agreed upon set of selection parameters, and the networks work collaboratively with the conference to manage the week-by-week selection process throughout the season. Within those parameters is a requirement that each Big Ten institution appear on Big Ten Network twice during the football season, with at least one of those being against a conference opponent.”

Iowa and USC have each played in just one game on BTN this season.

So, while the conference’s cable channel airs Iowa-USC, with the Trojans fighting to keep their College Football Playoff hopes alive at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, Fox will broadcast Central Florida at No. 6 Texas Tech (the Red Raiders are three-touchdown-plus betting favorites), and CBS will show Penn State at Michigan State.

At noon, Fox is airing No. 18 Michigan at Northwestern from Wrigley Field. Iowa-USC wasn’t an option for the window as Fox doesn’t schedule 9 a.m. PT kickoffs in its Big Noon Saturday time slot. NBC’s lone game Saturday is UCLA at No. 1 Ohio State in prime time, with the Buckeyes four-touchdown-plus favorites. 

Like the other Power 4 conferences, the Big Ten announces most game times and network assignments on a rolling 12- and 6-day basis, factoring in which matchups are the most intriguing throughout the season.