April 6, 2016 · 3:02 PM

So far, they’re still geniuses.

Nobody’s gone broke overestimating the passion of college football fans, SEC fans in particular.

Viewership is up across the board. The SEC set an all-time record across all conferences with 7,784,376 fans in 2015, leading all FBS conferences in average attendance for the 18th consecutive year with 78,630 fans per game.  There were attendance records set at lower levels of CFB, as well.

Of the reams of data to go through at the linked article, here’s one that deserves a lot of attention:

  • For the seventh consecutive year, the “SEC ON CBS” was the highest-rated regular season college football package on any network. CBS Sports’ national coverage of SEC football averaged a national household rating/share of 3.4/8. This marked the 20th season of SEC football on CBS.
  • CBS also scored the season’s highest-rated and most-watched college football game with the SEC Championship between Alabama and Florida on Dec. 5. The game delivered an average national household rating/share of 7.8/17 and averaged 12.76 million viewers.
  • CBS also had the second most-watched game of the season: Alabama’s primetime showdown versus LSU on Nov. 7, which averaged 11.06 million viewers.

I guess free TV still has its upside.  Advantage:  SEC (and to a lesser extent, Notre Dame).  Think they’re dumb enough to give that up?  For the right amount of Mickey’s money, sure.

10 Comments

Filed under College Football, ESPN Is The Devil, SEC Football

10 responses to “So far, they’re still geniuses.”

  1. eethomaswfnc
    April 6, 2016 at 3:08 PM

    I can’t believe the SEC will ever give up the exclusive spot at 3:30 on CBS nationally. It would be a damn shame if it ever did.

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  2. Jared S.
    April 6, 2016 at 3:42 PM

    I would say I love the SEC on CBS, but love is not a strong enough word. I adore and worship the SEC on CBS. I have never – NEVER – understood all the criticism of Uncle Verne and Gary Danielson. Verne is an icon and Gary Danielson is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best living/working color commentator in football – college or pro.

    And CBS’ coverage is outstanding. Their camera angles and quality are head-and-shoulders above anything that Fox and ABC/ESPN shows us. I mean, sometimes when I’m watching the SEC on CBS and a switch over to another football game, I think I’ve accidentally flipped over to the local access channel broadcasting a high school game. FOX and ABC/ESPN are simply awful. Awful. Watching is bad, but the commentary is even worse. Whenever I’m forced to watch football on FOX or ABC/ESPN, I mute it. Seriously.

    Long live the SEC on CBS. I will never pay for the SEC Network!

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  3. 92 grad
    April 6, 2016 at 5:27 PM

    Danielson is pretty good. He does a couple things that I find very irritating though.

    He ALWAYS sets himself up to see if he guesses a call/play call/decision and he strokes his ego too much and loves to drive it home.
    He enjoyed being critical of our team. He always tries to soft sell the “Georgia has the talent but they gotta do it” but it was obvious he had a boner for seeing us get big penalties or bad calls. Extension of his “I was right, I told you before the game, yadayadayada “.

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