{"id":1002158,"date":"2026-09-16T07:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T07:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1002158\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T07:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T07:03:16","slug":"texas-ohio-state-does-huge-numbers-for-espn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/1002158\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas-Ohio State does huge numbers for ESPN"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Texas&#8217;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/texas-longhorns\/article\/texas-ohio-state-steve-sarkisian-arch-manning-22427588.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">miraculous comeback win<\/a> over No. 1 Ohio State drew more viewers to ESPN than any regular-season college football game in a decade.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s according to the network&#8217;s public relations department, which released its numbers for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/texas-longhorns\/article\/texas-ohio-state-takeways-arch-manning-22427594.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">24-23 Longhorns victory<\/a> on Tuesday. Fourteen million viewers tuned in to ESPN\/ABC on Saturday to see Arch Manning lead the Horns&#8217; 20-point comeback in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Peaking at 16.8 million viewers, it was\u00a0ESPN&#8217;s top-rated regular-season game in 10 years, going back to a 2016 rivalry matchup between Ohio State and Michigan. It&#8217;s the most-viewed regular-season primetime game since 2012 (Notre Dame-USC), and the most-watched Week 2 game for any network on record. It more than doubled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/oklahoma-sooners\/article\/oklahoma-michigan-result-john-mateer-ncaa-football-22428998.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">rival Oklahoma&#8217;s loss to Michigan<\/a>, which averaged 8.221 million\u00a0viewers on Fox&#8217;s Big Noon Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas&#8217;\u00a0miraculous comeback win over No. 1 Ohio State drew more viewers to ESPN than any regular-season college football&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1002159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,121078,128628,122011],"class_list":["post-1002158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-sports-college-sports","tag-tp-college-football","tag-tp-texas-longhorns"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117279444423646535","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1002159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}