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One of the more highly anticipated college football weekends, a slate circled on fans’ calendars for months, is finally here. And the sport’s shifting dynamics are set to make it just as interesting off the field as it promises to be on the gridiron.
Even before the season started, Oct. 12 was being touted as potentially the best Saturday of college football in the past five years. That led to a viral social media trend of debating when it’s O.K. to skip weddings for college football.
With three matchups of ranked opponents and the continued impact of conference realignment, Saturday promises to be one to remember.
Prime-Time Viewership Battle
From a TV perspective, the most intriguing contests of the day are going head-to-head against each other in prime time. At 7:30 p.m. ET, NBC gets No. 2 Ohio State at No. 3 Oregon, while ABC has No. 9 Ole Miss at No. 13 LSU.
So far, the most-watched game of the season is Alabama’s 41–34 victory over Georgia, which drew 12 million viewers on ABC. That bested the audience of 9.35 million that tuned in to the early-season Texas-Michigan game, which the Longhorns won 31–12.
Could either Ohio State–Oregon or Ole Miss–LSU top those previous high marks? If they had a bigger spotlight to themselves, maybe, but it’s expected that many viewers likely split between the two.
New and Old Conference Foes
On Saturday afternoon, two networks are benefiting from conference realignment.
At 3:30 p.m. ET, ABC gets the first SEC version of the Red River Rivalry, as No. 1 Texas faces No. 18 Oklahoma. CBS, in its first season with a full Big Ten schedule, will air No. 4 Penn State at USC—those schools’ first contest in the same conference.
Best of the Rest
After ESPN airs Florida at No. 8 Tennessee at 7 p.m. ET, the network gets another crack at ratings-magnet Colorado, which has averaged more than 4.4 million viewers per game during the 4–1 start to Deion Sanders’s second season as head coach, and welcomes new Big 12 foe No. 18 Kansas State to Boulder.
Meanwhile, the MLB playoffs have forced Fox Sports to audible around its successful new Friday night college football schedule. Northwestern at Maryland is moving to FS1, so the main Fox network channel can show the winner-take-all Game 5 of the Padres-Dodgers National League Division Series.
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