Alabama-LSU delivers highest-rated regular-season game in 8 years, CBS says
LSU’s 46-41 win over Alabama delivered massive ratings for CBS.
The network announced that Saturday’s showdown in Tuscaloosa was the highest-rated regular-season college football game on any network in the past eight years. The 9.7/24 national household rating this weekend was a 47 percent increase from last year’s 6.6 rating, the network said. Last year’s game was in the primetime slot while Saturday’s game kicked off at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Saturday’s game peaked between 7 and 7:15 p.m., when it had 20.61 million viewers. The overall game average was 16.636 million viewers, accounting for the most-watched game in the LSU-Alabama series since 2011 when the teams were the top-ranked teams in the country. CBS now has the two highest-rated games of the season with LSU-Alabama joining Notre Dame’s trip to Georgia on Sept. 21.
LSU’s win, its first over Alabama since 2011, could propel the Tigers up to No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings. LSU was ranked No. 2 entering Saturday’s game behind No. 1 Ohio State. Alabama was No. 3 and will likely fall behind undefeated Clemson, last week’s No. 5, while No. 4 Penn State is set to tumble following its road loss to No. 17 Minnesota.
LSU (9-0) will travel to play Ole Miss on Saturday while Alabama (8-1) heads to Starkville to face Mississippi State.
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