Oklahoma football: Sooners’ TV viewership still high despite disappointing record
By Chip Rouse
The popular line from the movie “Field of Dreams” — “If you build it, he will come” — can also be used to describe the large television viewership for Oklahoma football.
For the past three-quarters of a century, Oklahoma has been building and maintaining a brand of football that connotes success at the highest levels and national attention and recognition. No college team has more wins since the end of World War II and only four other teams have more wins all-time.
As former head coach Barry Switzer liked to say, “Bud Wilkinson created the monster, it’s the job of the rest of us to keep it fed.” And the guardians of Oklahoma football have done just that, for many years now.
At about the time television was becoming a popular addition to households around the country, Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma Sooners were commanding the attention of college football enthusiasts far outside of the central part of the country. Because of that perfect storm, Oklahoma was one of the first college teams to be a part of a multiple national broadcasts.
Now with the proliferation of commercial, cable and streaming broadcast outlets, along with the ability to regionalize coverage, and media rights agreements negotiated with the major conferences, fans have the ability to see their favorite team practically every week throughout the season.
Largely because of its historic success, and with Bob Stoops and Lincoln Riley continuing to feed the monster over the past two decades, Oklahoma still has a high TV viewership.
According to analysis of television viewing numbers of college football games between 2015 and 2019 done by Zach Miller, who has his own sports website, “Run It Back With Zach,” and writes for Medium.com, Oklahoma had the eighth highest viewership of college teams during those years. OU football averaged 2.90 million viewers per week during that span. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ohio State and Alabama were the most viewed teams at 5.19 million and 5.09 million per week, respectively.
More recently, the Sooners have been in top seven of TV games in four of their seven games this season, headed by the Oklahoma-Nebraska game broadcast by FOX in Week 3. That game drew 3.41 viewers and was No. 2 that week among all TV games, according to sportsmediawatch.com.
The OU-Kansas State game the following week, televised at night by FOX, was No. 6 in Week 4 and brought in 3.37 million viewers.
The OU-TCU game in Week 5 drew 2.47 million viewers and was seventh among TV games broadcast that week. Then came the annual Red River rivalry game with Texas, which most Sooner fans couldn’t bear to watch. That was the fifth highest-rated game in Week 6 with 3.36 million viewers. Both games were televised by ABC.
After suffering three straight losses on national TV, however, viewership of the Oklahoma game with Kansas on ESPN2 in Week 7 dropped off quite a bit. That contest ranked 11th among TV games on Oct. 15, drawing 1.21 viewers.
Oklahoma has some challenging games remaining on the 2022 schedule. One thing about these television viewership numbers, though: It is difficult to discern whether Oklahoma or the opponent is the reason someone tunes in to the game. You have to believe, however, that the Oklahoma football cache has something to do with it.