College football didn’t just crown a new champion this season-it delivered a ratings performance worthy of a trophy itself.
Indiana’s stunning win over Miami in the College Football Playoff national championship wasn’t just a seismic moment on the field. Off the field, it drew 30.1 million viewers, the largest audience for a CFP title game since the playoff's debut 11 years ago.
That’s a 36% year-over-year jump-an eye-popping number that speaks to more than just the game’s drama. It reflects a season-long surge in the sport’s popularity that’s been building for months.
And let’s be clear: this wasn’t a one-night ratings spike. The 2025-26 college football season delivered across the board.
ESPN posted its most-watched regular season since 2011, with a 14% bump from the previous year. Fox’s “Big Noon” broadcast window saw an 11% increase.
And overall, the sport attracted its largest regular-season audience across all nationally rated networks since 2016.
So what’s driving the boom? There’s a lot at play here.
The sport’s competitive landscape has been reshaped by the rise of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) deals, the transfer portal, and the looming era of revenue sharing. That’s helped level the playing field, giving programs like Indiana and Texas Tech a real shot at the spotlight. Add in the expanded playoff format, which has made more games matter deeper into the fall, and you’ve got a recipe for sustained fan engagement.
But there’s another factor-less flashy, but just as impactful-that may be powering this ratings renaissance: how the numbers are being counted.
For the first time, Nielsen Media Research’s Out-of-Home (OOH) audience measurement now covers 100% of the country. That means viewers watching from sports bars, restaurants, hotels, and other communal spaces are finally being fully accounted for.
In previous years, only about 60% of TV markets were included in OOH data-and those were mostly major metro areas. The ones left out?
You guessed it: college towns.
That’s a big deal. College football thrives in those smaller markets, where Saturdays are sacred and the local team is the heartbeat of the community. By expanding OOH measurement to include those areas, Nielsen may have simply caught up with the reality of how and where fans have always watched the game.
“It’s not just organic growth,” said Patrick Crakes, head of Crakes Media and a former Fox Sports VP. “The Out-of-Home system is a strong factor. The measurement changes have benefitted college football the most because it’s what people leave their homes to watch.”
Nielsen also rolled out another change this season: its “Big Data + Panel” methodology, which incorporates smart TV and streaming data. But according to ESPN’s senior VP of research, Flora Kelly, that had only a modest impact on college football viewership. The real game-changer was OOH.
“ESPN had our highest (college football) ratings since 2011,” Kelly said. “And without Big Data, we would have had our highest ratings since 2011. The part that’s important is Out-of-Home.”
That helps explain why the Indiana-Miami title game saw such a massive jump in viewership-eight million more viewers than last year’s championship between Ohio State and Notre Dame. But how many of those were new fans, and how many were just finally being counted?
That’s still unclear. Nielsen doesn’t break out Out-of-Home data separately, so there’s no precise way to isolate its impact. But Kelly is confident that even without the enhancements, the sport would’ve seen growth.
Fox, for example, averaged 3.4 million viewers across all its college football broadcasts, a 12% increase. Its Friday night games-often a staple in sports bars-posted record numbers, averaging 2.3 million viewers. ABC, meanwhile, delivered its best season since 2006, thanks in part to stacking SEC games in back-to-back-to-back windows that averaged 6.9 million viewers.
The ripple effect of Nielsen’s updated methodology isn’t limited to college football. The NFL’s regular season averaged 18.7 million viewers per game-its highest mark in 36 years.
Fox’s World Series coverage averaged 16.1 million viewers, the best since 2017. But college football, with its deep roots in smaller towns and its die-hard fan culture, may have benefitted the most.
“College football was being undervalued,” Kelly said. “That has been right-sized.”
Still, the question lingers: how much of this season’s ratings boom is real growth, and how much is a better reflection of fans who were always there, just not counted?
Crakes believes we’ll have a clearer picture next year, when we can compare apples to apples under the new measurement system. Until then, what’s undeniable is that college football is riding a wave of momentum-on the field and in the living room (or the barstool).
And if Indiana’s Cinderella run to a national title is any indication, the sport’s next chapter might be even more compelling.