sports is literally the only thing people watch on live tv anymore. out of the top 100 most watched programs on live tv last year, 87 of them were football games.
87%. 82 NFL games and 5 college games. 6 of the top 10 most watched live tv programs- were- you guessed it football games.
football tv ratings and football tv ratings
alone will drive this crap. research dollars mean nothing. basketball means nothing- for fk sake Duke- yes Duke- makes more money from football than they do basketball.
this article from a year ago...some of the info is a few years old, but my guess is the #'s for today would be pretty similar.
these are the top 25 most viewed college football programs (weekly average viewers) on tv from
2015-2019;
1) Ohio State (5.19M)
2) Alabama (5.09M)
3) Michigan (4.18M)
4) Notre Dame (3.61M)
5) LSU (3.22M)
6) Auburn (3.12M)
7) Georgia (2.91M)
8) Oklahoma (2.90M)
9) Clemson (2.67M)10) Penn State (2.55M)
11) Florida (2.46M)
12) Wisconsin (2.27M)
13) Texas (2.269M)
14) Florida State (2.23M)15) Michigan State (2.20M)
16) Southern Cal (1.98M)
17) Texas A&M (1.851M)
18) Tennessee (1.849M)
19) Oklahoma State (1.64M)
20) Mississippi (1.61M)
21) Iowa (1.57M)
22) Nebraska (1.51M)
23) Miami (1.503M)24) TCU (1.495M)
25) Stanford (1.43M)
FSU & Miami both have remained top 25 in this time period, despite mostly sucking from 2015-2019 and really both sucking since about 2004- with exception of FSU having a couple great years with Jameis Winston. Either of them ever get really good again, their tv ratings would easily surge. Stanford in the top 25 is a bit of a surprise. Clemson was elite as it gets during this run- yet still barely cracked the top 10. Weird....don't see Oregon or Washington lol.