Saturday NFL draws larger audience than college games for rollout of 12-team playoff

A pair of Saturday NFL games drew a larger viewing audience than college football for the rollout of the sport’s 12-team playoff.

The playoff game between SMU and Penn State averaged 6.4 million viewers on TNT networks, compared with the Texans-Chiefs game on NBC, which averaged 15.5 million viewers.

Later, Clemson-Texas drew 8.6 million viewers on TNT, compared with 15.4 million for Steelers-Ravens on Fox.

ESPN, ABC and others aired the other two college games — Indiana-Notre Dame (13.4 million) on Friday night and Tennessee-Ohio State (14.3 million) on Saturday night. There were no competing NFL games.

The overall average of 10.6 million viewers was higher than all but four college games this season.

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