Wisconsin football as top-3 most watched team needs a bit of explaining

There's a stat that keeps getting tossed around week after week that Wisconsin is one of the most watched college football teams in the country. At first, it was fun to platform and throw around, but then Wisconsin played on the Big Ten Network, and the stats remained the same. I was quick to say, "Wow! Look at how Wisconsin's viewer ratings are, even with cable channels."

Then Wisconsin played on Peacock, and things started to feel fishy. Then it happened again and again. Wisconsin continued to stay at the top of the list with the same number. This is when I knew something was off. So, I dug in and found something that needs to be explained: Nielsen is only counting one single Wisconsin game.

Nielsen ratings are only counting one Wisconsin game, the one vs. Notre Dame

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Nielsen is only keeping track of network television games. They are not keeping stats for the Big Ten Network or Peacock. If you are keeping track of Wisconsin's games, then you know that so far this season Wisconsin has played on:
-NBC vs. Notre Dame
-Big Ten Network vs. Western Illinois
-Peacock vs. Eastern Michigan
-Peacock vs. Penn State
-Big Ten Network vs. Michigan State

This means that Wisconsin's data is only coming from a single game: Notre Dame. This was a game that stood alone on network TV with no NFL or any other major game to watch. It was a game that may be inflated due to the start of the football season.

Wisconsin and Notre Dame brought in a whopping 7.421 million viewers for NBC. According to On3.com, "That figure doesn’t include the 683,000 who watched on Peacock." So it's a huge amount of viewers for the Badgers, but it's only one game.

Wisconsin has no other games that Nielsen is keeping track of, so the average viewers are based on 1 out of 1 game. That's the 7.4 million viewers that continue to show up on this list, week after week.

Now, this doesn't mean that Wisconsin isn't going to remain in the top when they finally get back to network television. This article isn't meant to dump cold water on the whole thing or make it seem as if Wisconsin fans don't watch or the Badgers aren't generating big viewership. It actually is pointing out that we have no idea. There's no data except for one game, and there are a lot of reasons that game could be extremely high.

Wisconsin may find that it stays in the top when the next one lands on a channel that Nielsen tracks. However, we don't know. We also don't even know when that moment will be. The Badgers take on UCLA next, and that network and time won't be decided until after the games are played this weekend.

Wisconsin fans would love to find another network TV deal, considering that so far this year, we've been stuck on the Big Ten Network or Peacock (except for the Notre Dame game).

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