WHICH COLLEGE FOOTBALL PROGRAMS WERE THE MOST WATCHED IN 2022? By Zach Miller, publishedin Run it back with Zach, November 30, 2022

I think there will be substantial changes for BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston now that they are in Big-12 with a stronger tv contract and exposure. For the 4 corner schools, it will be interesting when they play the central time zone and eastern time zone BIg-12 schools and what effect that will have on the tv audience? The PAC-12 tv network was never picked up by Direct TV.

#13: TCU, 2.20M
#24: Oklahoma State, 1.68M
#29: Baylor, 1.32M
#30: Kansas State, 1.23M
#33: Utah, 1.16M
#38: BYU, 997K
#42: Iowa State, 882K
#51: West Virginia, 774K
#52: Kansas, 732K
#54: Texas Tech, 680K
#55: Cincinnati, 653K
#61: UCF, 510K
#62: Arizona, 506K
#67: Colorado, 352.9K
#71: Arizona State, 314K
#78: Houston, 242K

Utah lower than I would have guessed.

Yikes. Numbers don’t look good for UH. I’m sure they’ll go up 3x this year but that’s still a sharp decline from where we were 6+ years ago.

(09-05-2023 07:46 PM)WhoseHouse? Wrote:  Yikes. Numbers don’t look good for UH. I’m sure they’ll go up 3x this year but that’s still a sharp decline from where we were 6+ years ago.

Sure, but in reality, what have you done since then to warrent the eyeballs?

(09-05-2023 07:46 PM)WhoseHouse? Wrote:  Yikes. Numbers don’t look good for UH. I’m sure they’ll go up 3x this year but that’s still a sharp decline from where we were 6+ years ago.

Houston has been known for high power offenses and convincing W’s… I think if Houston can get that going again we’ll see eyeball interest jump.

(09-05-2023 07:49 PM)otown Wrote:  

(09-05-2023 07:46 PM)WhoseHouse? Wrote:  Yikes. Numbers don’t look good for UH. I’m sure they’ll go up 3x this year but that’s still a sharp decline from where we were 6+ years ago.

Sure, but in reality, what have you done since then to warrent the eyeballs?

Well we haven't been great but its not like we've been bad either. We made bowls 9 of our 10 seasons in the American. Two top 25 finishes, most recent being 2021. So its just a bit disheartening. I'm sure our numbers will be 2-3x better this year.

(09-05-2023 07:46 PM)WhoseHouse? Wrote:  Yikes. Numbers don’t look good for UH. I’m sure they’ll go up 3x this year but that’s still a sharp decline from where we were 6+ years ago.

This has Houston ranked between Va Tech at #76 and UVA at #79. That doesn’t look right to me…

I googled this list and the author basically said he slapped a 0.0 rating down for a school anytime they played on espn+, nfl network or cbssports. Houston played 5 games on these channels. The schedule last year was so pathetic that there were really only 3 games that had a reasonable chance to draw good ratings (at Tech, and Friday games against Tulane and Memphis). I just looked up last year’s ratings and I’d say UH underperformed (in ratings) for 2 of those 3 games and still averaged almost 850k.

Houston didn’t play a single game on network tv and played literally one game on espn for the entire regular season. UH has a lot of work to do, but folks could at least try to be fair. This list has Houston down for zero viewers for almost half the season.

Ignore those numbers, they are meaningless.

We've been over the TV numbers hundreds of times since realignment started, and there are built in biases that either bloat a teams numbers (like OSU's, OU's, UTs, etc.) or hurt a program like Houston.

The factors that affect game viewership are often outside of the control of the teams... like Channel and more importantly time slot. For the Freshman 4, you also have to factor in media contracts.

The media plays favorites - period. If you're on at Noon on ABC then you are going to get a boost in viewership, not because of your team, per se, but because there is a very large number of people who simply tune into the "game of the week", they watch that, then go about their business. If you are lucky enough to get on that Network and time slot, then your ratings will go way up... perhaps only because of your opponent.

ESPN and FOX decide which games that they want to place in which broadcast slot, which also can widely affect your viewer ratings.

If you don't have media contracts that give you weekly access to ABC/ESPN/FOX, then your ratings will be affected negatively because not as many can get CBSN, and some of the other broadcast channels. (Many don't get ESPNU, ESPN News, FS1, etc.)

While those numbers from last year are what they are, they don't really mean much to many B12 teams that now have access to better media channels and time slots. Also, playing OU and UT can boost your ratings, and not everybody plays those teams this year.

We really need to hold off on any real team comparisons until after OU/UT are out of the league, to remove that built in media bias. (media bias because neither team has been very good the past 3-4 years, but the media still puts their games in prime time slots)

(09-06-2023 10:05 AM)CaliforniaCowboy Wrote:  Ignore those numbers, they are meaningless.

We've been over the TV numbers hundreds of times since realignment started, and there are built in biases that either bloat a teams numbers (like OSU's, OU's, UTs, etc.) or hurt a program like Houston.

The factors that affect game viewership are often outside of the control of the teams... like Channel and more importantly time slot. For the Freshman 4, you also have to factor in media contracts.

The media plays favorites - period. If you're on at Noon on ABC then you are going to get a boost in viewership, not because of your team, per se, but because there is a very large number of people who simply tune into the "game of the week", they watch that, then go about their business. If you are lucky enough to get on that Network and time slot, then your ratings will go way up... perhaps only because of your opponent.

ESPN and FOX decide which games that they want to place in which broadcast slot, which also can widely affect your viewer ratings.

If you don't have media contracts that give you weekly access to ABC/ESPN/FOX, then your ratings will be affected negatively because not as many can get CBSN, and some of the other broadcast channels. (Many don't get ESPNU, ESPN News, FS1, etc.)

While those numbers from last year are what they are, they don't really mean much to many B12 teams that now have access to better media channels and time slots. Also, playing OU and UT can boost your ratings, and not everybody plays those teams this year.

We really need to hold off on any real team comparisons until after OU/UT are out of the league, to remove that built in media bias. (media bias because neither team has been very good the past 3-4 years, but the media still puts their games in prime time slots)

Spot on. During the Covid year Coastal Carolina pulled in some monster ratings because they got a tv spot usually reserved for the Michigan’s of the world.

TV execs know all of this and I’m sure they have their own “advanced metrics” so to speak. I equate the tv ratings that get reported to us as the the equivalent of box score stats. They’re not meaningless, but they can be misleading at times.

(09-05-2023 05:53 PM)Tulsa Guy Wrote:  WHICH COLLEGE FOOTBALL PROGRAMS WERE THE MOST WATCHED IN 2022? By Zach Miller, publishedin Run it back with Zach, November 30, 2022

I think there will be substantial changes for BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston now that they are in Big-12 with a stronger tv contract and exposure. For the 4 corner schools, it will be interesting when they play the central time zone and eastern time zone BIg-12 schools and what effect that will have on the tv audience? The PAC-12 tv network was never picked up by Direct TV.

#13: TCU, 2.20M
#24: Oklahoma State, 1.68M
#29: Baylor, 1.32M
#30: Kansas State, 1.23M
#33: Utah, 1.16M
#38: BYU, 997K
#42: Iowa State, 882K
#51: West Virginia, 774K
#52: Kansas, 732K
#54: Texas Tech, 680K
#55: Cincinnati, 653K
#61: UCF, 510K
#62: Arizona, 506K
#67: Colorado, 352.9K
#71: Arizona State, 314K
#78: Houston, 242K

That #61 ranking is painful for me to look at, but I'm not surprised by it. After the 2017 and 2018 seasons when we won 25 games in a row, we slipped a bit in interest, I think, even though we averaged 8.5 wins per season from 2019 thru 2022 (the 2020 season was only 10 games long for us, and our record that season was 6-4). Things change this season, however. The crowd for Kent State was huge (hardly an empty seat in sight), and we already have at least three upcoming home games sold out. There's good reason to believe that ranking could skyrocket.