Unless you were an attorney tasked with hashing out the settlement—in which case, congratulations on your giant paycheck—the year 2024 was an exciting one for college football writ large.
The summer release of built considerable excitement leading up to the season. Realignment introduced enough intriguing new matchups to distract fans from its dubious ethics. The 12-team College Football Playoff system, even before properly kicking off, looks like a winner in the short term.
And that's to say nothing of the action on the field, which may have made for the most exciting season of the 2020s. It seems appropriate, then, that ESPN announced Tuesday that had posted its most-viewed regular season in history.
"During the record-breaking 2024 season, averaged 2.2 million viewers for its best season ever—a 6% increase from 2023 and 5% over the prior season high," the network wrote in its release.
What factored into the increase? ESPN's lucrative deal with the expanded SEC probably helped. Ex-Alabama coach Nick Saban was terrific in his first year as a panelist, and former West Virginia specialist Pat McAfee has shown signs of settling in after mixed early reviews. The show also deftly balanced its tentpole trips with off-the-beaten path excursions to Berkeley, Calif. and Bloomington, Ind.
However, there's no substitute for the excitement good college football generates—and that was available in spades this year.
