Strong audience for Colorado’s blowout loss to Nebraska

The “Coach Prime” effect is not quite as strong as it was last season, but it remains outsized — even, or perhaps especially, when the Buffaloes are losing badly.

Saturday’s Colorado-Nebraska college football game averaged 6.3 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, according to Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — easily the most-watched game in the network’s “Big Ten Saturday Night” franchise. (NBC has drawn larger audiences for its Notre Dame package in the past year, including ten million for a matchup with Ohio State last season.)

As was the case for their closer-than-expected opener against North Dakota State (4.76M), Colorado did not draw quite as well as for the equivalent game last season, which also put the Buffaloes against Nebraska. Viewership declined 28% from that year-ago matchup, which averaged a Nielsen-only audience of 8.7 million in the FOX “Big Noon Saturday” window.

Last season, it took until mid-October before a single Colorado game averaged fewer than seven million viewers. Coming off of a near-disaster against FCS North Dakota State and a blowout loss to the Cornhuskers in which they trailed 28-0 at halftime, it may be the case that Colorado does not get to that mark once this season. Even so, audiences of four and six million for Colorado football would have been unthinkable two years ago, when the team played one game all year with a seven-figure audience (its season-opener against TCU averaged 1.25 million).

Figures for the weekend’s other college football games were not immediately available.

The post Strong audience for Colorado’s blowout loss to Nebraska appeared first on Sports Media Watch .