Homecoming weekends are supposed to feel alive, and Rutgers at least delivered that part of the script. The announced crowd for the Scarlet Knights’ homecoming game came in at 48,650, and several readers thought that sounded close to reality. Even if plenty of those fans were dressed in crimson and cream instead of scarlet, the place still had a respectable buzz before kickoff.
Rutgers wasn’t even the smallest Big Ten draw last weekend. That distinction went to Northwestern, which opened its “most expensive college stadium” in front of a full house of “just” 35,000. By the account here, the new building gave them exactly what they wanted: loud, luxe, and a landslide win for the Wildcats.
Across the league, the attendance numbers were pretty healthy. Eight Big Ten games were played last weekend, and six were reported at capacity or better.
Wisconsin led the way at a reported 102.65% capacity, with Minnesota barely over capacity as well. And yes, the Gophers’ win over Michigan was enough to inspire a “Ski-U-Mah” from the page.
USC, meanwhile, keeps being a strange one in the attendance conversation. The Trojans drew 59,136 for a stadium that seats 77,500 for football, and that was their fourth home game of the season without a sellout. The explanation offered here was simple enough: people in the SoCal region just don’t see it as a major draw.
The next round of conference games should offer another useful test. Indiana goes to Nebraska on Fox’s Big Noon window, while USC travels to Penn State on Saturday night. Penn State has already taken heat for not filling the place, so with NBC and Peacock on the call, the crowd will be worth watching closely.
The bigger picture on college football viewership is still taking shape in 2026, but early numbers have not been especially encouraging. The feeling around the sport has been that both attendance and TV ratings are down some, and The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel offered a reason that goes beyond simple apathy: the games themselves have largely not been great, and there have been too many nonconference slates padded with payout games like UMass and Howard.
Mandel pointed out that since the College Football Playoff began in 2014, and excluding 2020, there has been an average of 8.5 nonconference regular-season games between ranked teams each year. Last season, there were nine. This year, so far, there have only been two: Louisville-Ole Miss and Ohio State-Texas in Week 2.
That shortage shows up in the numbers. Mandel noted that average viewership through four weeks was down 11 percent year over year, according to Front Office Sports. The big games still pull in massive audiences - Ohio State-Texas drew a record 14 million viewers for a Week 2 game - but there just have not been enough matchups like that to keep the overall numbers high.
Only Ohio State-Texas and LSU-Ole Miss, which was a conference game, cleared 10 million viewers. By comparison, last season had four such games in Week 1 alone: Texas-Ohio State, Notre Dame-Miami, Alabama-Florida State and LSU-Clemson.
One more wrinkle: the TV picture is shaped by the networks themselves. The SEC has been the biggest draw, with the Big Ten second, but the SEC and ACC both air through ESPN, and those Nielsen numbers are not included the way Big Ten Network games are. BTN games are tracked, which matters when you start comparing the leagues.
As for Week 5, the top five most-watched games were spread across the Big Ten, SEC and ACC. The Big Ten posted strong numbers in its marquee national window, but once the games moved onto cable and secondary channels, the audience fell off sharply.
Maryland-Nebraska took the biggest hit, drawing 1.7 million fewer viewers than the night game on NBC. The three BTN games were in line with the network’s other numbers this season, though a bit lower overall, and Ohio State-Ball State’s audience - well over a million - was an outlier rather than the norm.
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Rutgers Baseball Just Got An Early Glimpse Of A Brutal Big Ten Road Ahead
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