For the Syracuse Orange, there’s been plenty of discussion around the team’s performance on the field, but there remains one critical topic we have not addressed so far in 2025: tv ratings. How many people
are actually tuning in for a Syracuse football game?
And so far, the early numbers on the year are proving to not be just promising, but an improvement compared to what recent history has to say.
The top storyline when looking at Nielson: out of Syracuse’s four games this year, two of its games have cracked the top-10 in viewership.
The Syracuse-Clemson matchup on ESPN reached almost 3.5 million (3.39 million to be exact) viewers, with a peak audience of 3.7 million viewers. That was the fifth-most of all games in Week 4, trailing Florida-Miami, Auburn-Oklahoma, Michigan-Nebraska and Texas Tech-Utah. It placed second of all the noon kickoffs, only behind Texas Tech-Utah on FOX.
Even when the game switched over to ESPN2 due to a lengthy weather delay, it still drew 1.06 million viewers, according to Nielson. For context, that was the most of all games that aired on ESPN2 (for transparency: the other games that cracked the top-22 and were on this channel were NC State-Duke, SMU-TCU and BYU-East Carolina).
It’s a similar story with Syracuse’s season-opener against Tennessee. Among all the Week 0 and 1 games, Syracuse’s nooner versus the Volunteers had an audience of 2.59 million, ranking 10th overall, 8th among all of the ESPN-owned channels.
- Texas-Ohio State (16.62M, FOX)
- Notre Dame-Miami (10.8M, ABC)
- Alabama-Florida State (10.66M, ABC)
- LSU-Clemson (10.45M, ABC)
- TCU-North Carolina (6.07M, ESPN)
- Virginia Tech-South Carolina (5.43M, ESPN)
- Iowa State-Kansas State (4.47M, ESPN)
- Georgia Tech-Colorado (3.74M, ESPN)
- Nebraska-Cincinnati (3.33M, ESPN)
- Syracuse-Tennessee (2.59M, ABC)
- Nevada-Penn State (2.24M, CBS)
- Boise State-South Florida (2.04M, ESPN)
- Marshall-Georgia (1.67M, ESPN)
- UTSA-Texas A&M (1.07M, ESPN)
- Mississippi State-Southern Miss (771K, ESPN)
Now, a few counter points. Syracuse’s start time was the same as Texas-Ohio State, which reportedly had “the largest week one college football audience on record,” according to Sports Media Watch. Considering Week 1 was also spread out from Thursday to Monday, a few games also certainly had super-duper bumps since it was the only matchup on, and the NFL hadn’t started yet (looking at you, TCU-North Carolina.
Regardless, two top-10 places through four games is a positive step for the Orange, especially when it was part of a record-setting slate for ABC.
(Writer’s note: a key definition to keep in mind with all these Nielson ratings, to make something complicated easier to digest is that it combines the usual, historic formula with linear TV plus data it receives from streaming. Also, it seems like the trend of college football viewership continues to climb will be a trend throughout 2025).
Keeping in the data is limited in 2025 and tracking TV ratings across all college footballs teams per year is tedious and generally challenging, it certainly is optimistic for the Orange so far.
Take this chart from 2023 by Tony Altimore, a Monitor Deloitte consultant and mega sports stats guy. According to the numbers Altimore collected of total regular season Nielson ratings from 2016 through 2023, Syracuse did crack the top-60, but just barely. The Orange sat at No. 55 overall and 10th in the ACC before it added Stanford, California and SMU.
Other numbers out there show a mostly similar trend, even looking at last year, where Syracuse went 10-3 and won its first bowl game since 2018.
Zach Miller, who runs the blog “Run it Back with Zach” on Medium, back in 2021 listed out the average number of viewers for teams per week between 2015 and 2019. Over that five-year sample, Syracuse placed No. 51 overall and ninth in the pre-All Coast Conference era. In 2021, it was No. 77 overall and No. 12 in the ACC. For 2022, it climbed almost 30 spots to No. 48.
Here’s the interesting part: in 2024, it was 63rd. And for context, that 2021 team went 5-7, and the 2022 team started off 6-0, then flamed out and finished 7-5. What’s the logic behind this?
From what the numbers show, being good is only half the battle. It’s being good consistently (broadly speaking), earning those primetime slots or getting on the major networks *and capitalizing at least a few times.
The broader schedule context also matters as well.
Look back at the 2015 to 2019 run. Here were the final records for those seasons: 4-8, 4-8, 4-8, 10-3 and 5-7. No wonder Syracuse was outside the top-50: it had one winning season during this stretch.
In 2021, the Orange had a season-opener against Ohio on CBS Sports Network, a mid-afternoon ESPN2 game versus Wake Forest followed by a night game against Clemson on ESPN, and then, that was it. Half of its games were on the ACC Network, which it seems like does *not track the Nielson ratings.
The 2022 team only had two more wins versus the 2021 team, but remember the 6-0 start? Through eight games, it had five on the big networks: CBSSN for UConn, then ESPN2 for Purdue, ESPN for Virginia and a pair of ABC nooners against Clemson and Notre Dame. After the Notre Dame game, it had three straight ACC Network games and zero big network slots until its bowl game versus Minnesota.
And then there’s 2024, which is pure #Sickos TV scheduling looking back at it: five games on the ACC Network/ACC Network+, a Friday night game on ESPN versus Stanford plus a Thursday night game on ESPN versus Pittsburgh and three straight (!!) on the CW. The last two games really had Syracuse in the spotlight: Saturday mid-afternoon versus Miami on ESPN and Syracuse’s Friday night bowl game versus Washington State on FOX.
Again, the wins matter, but so does the quality of opponent and the ability to get one of those coveted TV slots. With the ACC’s new revenue distribution model, high viewership gets rewarded. It’s why you’ve seen social media posts like these on platforms like Facebook, where “Every ‘Cuse Click Counts.”
When that model was first announced, Kevin hit the nail on the head: don’t over-schedule, but being smart helps make every little bit of opportunity count.
Looking ahead, there will definitely be more opportunities for Orange fans to see their team in the national spotlight. Syracuse-SMU could be on ESPN2. Playing North Carolina on a Friday (Halloween) night on ESPN is significant. Notre Dame will be on NBC. The Miami game has a high chance of being at least on ESPN.
And if the program keeps on trending in the direction it’s going in under Fran Brown, expect this to be the new normal.
