The No. 19 Colorado Buffaloes have been the story of college football in 2023, and their 3-0 record has jump started a Pac-12 conference that unfortunately will meet its demise at season’s end.
What Deion Sanders has done by turning over an entire roster and bringing so many players to Boulder has captured the imagination of college football fans everywhere. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have The Rock and Lil’ Wayne on the sidelines at games as well.
But that has translated to record ratings for Colorado, and their TV partners likely couldn’t be happier to see a new can’t miss team every weekend, particularly in the late-night TV windows.
@CUBuffsFootball‘s comeback thriller registers .
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) September 19, 2023
ESPN’s 5th most-watched CFB game on record
Shatters previous ESPN late prime window viewership high
@ESPNCFB‘s most-streamed regular season game of all time pic.twitter.com/his917lb0F
Want to hear an amazing Colorado-CSU TV stat?
— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) September 19, 2023
At 2:15amET, the game still registered 8.230 million viewers – an audience that was more than 1 million viewers bigger than the peak audience of any other CFB game this week.
We were one of those 8.3 million viewers on the east coast at 2:15 a.m., watching Shedeur Sanders lead a 98-yard drive and get the two-point conversion to send the game to overtime. And we stayed up extremely late to see a double overtime victory.
With all respect to the Fresno State’s and Hawai’i’s of college football that we love, sometimes that midnight oil can only burn so much after a full day of The Best Sport already. But what CU is doing is that fascinating to watch, and that should only continue even if they can’t pull off a win this weekend.
Colorado is a 21-point underdog at Oregon on Saturday per DraftKings Sportsbook.