Michigan Conquers Penn State Amid Jim Harbaugh Suspension To Draw Largest College Football Week 11 Audience

After a few slower weeks for college football, audiences appear to be climbing again in Week 11.

Michigan-Penn State drew 9.16M viewers on Fox, which was by far the most-watched game of the week.

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Penn State’s loss to Michigan tallied the sixth largest audience of the college football season. However, it’s the second most-watched matchup of the season for Fox, behind the Penn State-Ohio State game that drew an audience of 9.96M.

The audience win comes as Michigan is under intense scrutiny, as head coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended ahead of Saturday’s game after the Big Ten found the team was conducting non-permitted scouting operations. With Michigan currently ranked No. 2 on the AP poll, it’s probable that the ongoing controversy contributed to the large audience.

Fox delivered both of the most-watched games of the week. In second place was Utah-Washington with 5.17M viewers. Mississippi-Georgia came in third with 4.83M viewers on ESPN, landing among the top three cable audiences of the season.

Rounding out the top five were Miami-FSU with 4.14M viewers on ABC and Tennessee-Missouri with 3.62M on CBS.

As always, several networks are not Nielsen-rated, meaning their audiences aren’t reported week-over-week. Those include the SEC Network, ACC Network, CBS Sports Network, and the Pac-12 Network. ESPN+ and Peacock are also not Nielsen-rated for live programming.

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