CFP ratings plummet 7% as games opposite NFL struggle again

While college football is big business, the NFL remains king as more evidence arrived from last weekend's television ratings.

Even the first round of the College Football Playoff last Friday and Saturday struggled to compete against opposing NFL regular-season games on the airwaves.

The four first-round CFP games had an average TV audience of 9.9 million viewers, down 7% from the first round last season that had an average of 10.6 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and TNT, according to Front Office Sports.

By comparison, two NFL games on Saturday averaged 18.4 million viewers per game.

The biggest audience for a first-round CFP game last weekend came on Friday against no NFL competition, when traditional powers Alabama and Oklahoma drew an audience of 14.9 million viewers.

Miami and Texas A&M played an early game Saturday, before NFL games kicked off, and had an audience of 14.8 million.

The two later CFP games on Saturday struggled while overlapping the Saturday NFL slate. It did not help that those CFP games both included Group of Six teams.

While Tulane-Ole Miss drew 6.2 million viewers, the NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders, which started over an hour later, had 15.5 million. James Madison-Oregon (4.4 million) did not come close to competing with the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears (21.3 million).

It is an ominous sign for the CFP, which appears to be moving toward a 16-team postseason that would add four more first-round games.

The CFP-NFL discrepancy is not just limited to this year. According to the FOS report, first-round CFP games in both 2024 and 2025 that did not overlap with NFL broadcasts averaged 14.3 million viewers. Those that did overlap with the NFL had an average of 6.4 million.