Ohio State-Texas Game Averages 14M Viewers, Sets Week 2 Record but Down from 2025

Texas's comeback win over Ohio State on ABC averaged 14.0 million viewers on Saturday, according to Awful Announcing. The game peaked at 16.4 million viewers and marked the most-watched regular-season college football game on ESPN networks since Michigan and Ohio State played in 2016. It also set the record for the most-watched Week 2 college football game ever and became the most-watched primetime regular-season game since Notre Dame and USC in 2012. The viewership, while historic, represents a decline from last year's matchup. Awful Announcing reported that Ohio State and Texas drew 16.6 million viewers on Big Noon Saturday in 2025, compared to 14.0 million on ABC primetime this year. The change in time slot and network mirrors the teams' movement in the schedule; the Ohio State-Texas game was a Week 1 matchup last year and Week 2 this year. Other Week 2 college football contests drew smaller audiences. Michigan's win over Oklahoma on Fox's Big Noon Saturday averaged 8.2 million viewers and peaked at 11.1 million. Alabama and Kentucky averaged 7.3 million viewers with a peak of 9 million, making it the third-most-watched game of the week, according to Awful Announcing. Missouri and Kansas played in Friday primetime on Fox and averaged 3.1 million viewers, up 33 percent from Fox's Friday college football average from the prior week. Oklahoma State's upset over Oregon on ESPN averaged 2.1 million viewers, though the game was delayed due to rain and was bumped to non-Nielsen-rated ESPNews at 4 p.m. to allow ESPN to air the women's US Open final. Iowa's win over Iowa State in primetime averaged 2.2 million viewers across NBC and Peacock. BY and Arizona on Fox averaged 3.0 million viewers. The combined audience for the Fox Big Noon matchups of Ohio State versus Texas and Oklahoma versus Michigan reached 24.8 million viewers, while ABC's primetime combined audience totaled 23.7 million. Year-over-year comparisons face a methodological caveat. Starting in September, Nielsen added new co-viewing metrics and other refinements to its Big Data methodology, per Awful Announcing. The NFL has argued that Nielsen's changes will hurt its viewership numbers, which raises questions about the precise nature of the decline for Ohio State and Texas. The Bottom Line: Ohio State-Texas set multiple viewership records but pulled in fewer viewers than the same two teams playing in 2025, a decline that may reflect the time slot and network change, the shift to Week 2, or Nielsen's updated measurement methodology, or some combination thereof.