College Football Week 1 TV Ratings A Huge Win For FOX And Colorado, Disaster For ESPN

FOX rolled the dice on Deion Sanders making Colorado relevant in Week 1 of the college football season, and it paid off in a massive way.

Couple that with the disastrous Disney-Spectrum dispute that caused massive ESPN blackouts across the country, and it was a BANNER weekend for the good guys (that's us!).

The TV numbers are in, they've been crunched, and when they came back out the other side the data was clear: people were obsessed with Colorado's upset bid in Fort Worth Saturday, and the only thing that saved Disney and ESPN over the first weekend was Sunday night's LSU-FSU game:

FOX rolled the dice on Deion Sanders and won while ESPN plunges

Holy cow! What a drop-off! I haven't seen a plunge like that since Bud Light teamed up with Dylan Mulvaney earlier this year.

Yes, obviously the Disney-Spectrum you-know-what measuring contest had a lot to do with those numbers. When Spectrum-users -- many of whom are in the south -- can't watch any of the Disney-owned networks for the first weekend of college football season, it's going to be an issue.

That being said, the Colorado-TCU game was a pretty big risk for FOX -- which also sent Big Noon Kickoff to Forth Worth. And it paid off in a massive way.

It especially paid off because FOX is also sending it's pregame show to Boulder this Saturday for Deion Sanders' home-opener against Nebraska.

College GameDay, on the other hand, will be in Tuscaloosa for the Texas-Alabama rematch. The numbers this time next week will be fascinating to watch.

It's also pretty shocking to see so little SEC teams on that above graphic. Again, you had a lot of them on ESPN -- including Florida, which played Thursday night and brought in 3.1 million viewers.

But still, the big winners over Week 1 were clearly FOX, CBS (Ohio State-Indiana, Rutgers, Oregon State) and NBC ( WVU-Penn State).

If not for the LSU-FSU Sunday night game, it would've been a bloodbath for the World Wide Leader. If you read OutKick last Saturday, I told you it was time to flip the channel over to FOX for good, anyways.

Looks like plenty of you listened!