College football television ratings reveal Week 1's true winner

College football teams aren't the only ones battling for No. 1.

With broadcasters spending billions on media rights, television networks arguably have just as much at stake.

Following Week 1, there's no debate about the biggest winner.

The Athletic's Stewart Mandel shared a list of the top college football games by viewership over the extended Labor Day weekend. The top six aired on ABC or ESPN.

USC-LSU led with 9.2 million viewers, followed by Notre Dame-Texas A&M (8.2 million), Georgia-Clemson (7.9 million), Miami-Florida (6.6 million), North Dakota State-Colorado (4.8 million) and Florida State-Boston College (4.4 million).

Penn State-West Virginia was the top non-ABC/ESPN game, drawing 2.99 million viewers on Fox.

NBC received the smallest number among the highlighted games, drawing 2.6 million to its 7:30 p.m. EST Fresno State-Michigan game.

While those numbers should ebb and flow throughout the season — we'd expect Fox to win the ratings war in Week 2 with Texas-Michigan airing directly after "Big Noon Kickoff" — ESPN's SEC schedule should draw massive numbers throughout the season.

This weekend, ABC is the only network to air a ranked-vs.-ranked primetime game with No. 14 Tennessee's contest against No. 24 NC State kicking off at 7:30 p.m. EST.

It's competing directly with ratings magnet Colorado, which plays at Nebraska on NBC. That could be a major draw this weekend, but ESPN appears to have made a shrewder investment in its massive rights deal with the SEC than Fox, NBC and CBS with the Big Ten.

In December 2020 , ESPN and the SEC agreed to a 10-year, $3 billion exclusive television rights package. Later, in August 2022 , Fox, NBC and CBS signed a seven-year, $8 billion media rights deal with the Big Ten.

ESPN is getting its money's worth early while the other major players in college football's media-rights landscape wait for a return on investment.