This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The final numbers are (fnally) in from Saturday's college football games, and the BYU-Michigan game still attracted more viewers than the Utah-Oregon game — but not by much.
• The final numbers for Utah's big win are 1.8 rating and 2.975 million viewers.
• The final numbers for BYU's big loss are a 2.0 rating and 3.071 million viewers.
• That's a difference of just 96,000 viewers — a difference of just over 3 percent.
Yes, these numbers are somewhat different from the numbers earlier in the week. For one thing, the BYU viewership numbers were delayed. And those earlier numbers were estimates based on a smaller sample — markets that are wired for overnight ratings — and these are estimates based on a larger national sample.
But they remain estimates.
And what I wrote earlier in the week still stands. You can't draw any conclusions from this in terms of who has more fans, who's a bigger TV draw or anything else because they were games against different opponents at different times on different channels.
Despite the fact that I made that point repeatedly, people who only read headlines drew all kinds of conclusions in the comments. I figure that will happen again.
Have at it ...