Ole Miss is almost certainly going to be a participant in one of college football’s most-watched games this season in eight days.
And while plenty of people tuned in to watch the only top 25 matchup of the weekend, it wasn’t the highest-viewed game. In fact, the game being played at the same time as No. 9 Ole Miss and No. 24 Louisville squared off was.
Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin averaged 3.4 million more viewers, an audience approximately 72% larger than the Music City Kickoff featuring the Rebels. Its peak was 3.5 million higher. Ole Miss and Louisville averaged 4.7 million viewers with a peak of 6.2 million.
Labor Day Sunday & Monday wrapped up a wild Week 1 of @ESPNCFB
🏈 @LouisvilleFB–@OleMissFB | 4.7M avg. viewers on ABC | Peak: 6.2M
🏈 @SMUFB–@FSUFootball | 4.1M avg. viewers on ESPN | Peak: 5.2M pic.twitter.com/heSCwZ3SxQ— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) September 10, 2026
NBC says the game was the most-watched college football game of the entire weekend and its third-most-watched Notre Dame broadcast since 2005. The 8.1 million consisted of 7.4 million linear viewers and a 683,000 streaming average-minute audience. It peaked from 8:15-8:30 p.m., when Notre Dame led 13-10.
So, despite Ole Miss and Louisville being the much closer and more dramatic game, Notre Dame’s national brand, Wisconsin’s Big Ten audience and the Lambeau Field setting comfortably won the window.
Three other games also had higher ratings than the Rebels’ last-second win. Clemson and LSU had 5.8 million in a Saturday evening time slot on ABC. A couple of instate rivals, Washington and Washington State, also topped five million (5.5) on NBC.
Of the weekend, Boise State and Oregon’s Saturday game was the other tightly contested contest between teams with CFP aspirations (Boise State being one of the rare Group of 6 schools to have those). That game drew 4.8 million viewers on CBS.
However, not all of those games went “head-to-head” in the same time slot. Notre Dame’s and Ole Miss’ games.
It’s not very surprising the Irish drew more viewers, either. Love it or hate it, Notre Dame has a huge national brand. Lambeau Field is about as iconic and legendary of a football stadium you’ll find.
And, perhaps more importantly, Wisconsin is a bigger brand than Louisville. Ole Miss isn’t a behemoth brand like Notre Dame or even some of its SEC brethren. But the Rebels have stayed at the forefront of college football this offseason.
Maybe if the game is against a team with a bigger brand, or following, Sunday night’s TV numbers would be closer to what Notre Dame and Wisconsin did.
