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Scott D. Pierce: Ute bowl ratings are decent, plus a look at Utah, BYU, USU regular-season ratings

Sports on TV • Would you believe 29 percent more people watch BYU-Portland State than BYU-Utah?

Utah running back Zack Moss (2) stiff-arms West Virginia Mountaineers linebacker Al-Rasheed Benton (3) while running the ball during the third quarter of Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl NCAA college football game in Dallas on Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2017. Utah won 30-14. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

The Heart of Dallas Bowl turned out to be a nice win for the Utah Utes and a not-so-great experience for viewers. And not just for West Virginia fans, who saw their team lose 30-14 in a game that wasn’t really that close.

It was dull. I blame the Mountaineers, who were utterly inept on offense.

Despite that, the numbers for the Heart of Dallas Bowl were pretty good. According to ESPN, 2.2 million viewers tuned in, a 36 percent increase over Army-North Texas (1.6 million) in 2016.

That’s a fraction of the audience for Big Bowls (11.73 million viewers for Wisconsin-Miami/Orange, 10.2 million for Penn State-Washington/Fiesta, 9.5 million for Ohio State-USC/Cotton). (We don’t have Rose or Sugar numbers as of this writing.)

But the H of D Bowl was kind of in the middle of the pre-New Year’s weekend games — fewer than TCU-Stanford/Alamo (4.3 million), Oklahoma State-Virginia Tech/Camping World (4.3 million), Iowa-Boston College/Pinstripe (4 million), Boise State-Oregon/Las Vegas (3.8 milIion), Army-San Diego State/Armed Forces (3.5 million), Texas Tech-USF/Birmingham (3.4 million), Texas-Missouri/Texas (3.4 million), Kansas State-UCLA/Cactus (3.3 million), Duke-Northern Illinois/Detroit (2.5 million), and N.C. A&T-Grambling/Celebration (2.4 million); equal to the Florida State-Southern Miss Independence; and more than Fresno State-Houston/Hawaii (2.1 million), Purdue-Arizona/San Francisco (2.1 million), Navy-Virginia/Military (2 million), Appalachian State-Toledo/Mobile (1.8 million),Temple-FIU/St. Petersburg (1.6 million), Michigan State-Washington State/Holiday (1.6 million), Wyoming-Central Michigan/Idaho Potatoes (1.5 million), FAU-Akron/Boca Raton (1.4 million), Troy-North Texas/New Orleans (1.3 million), MTSU-Arkansas State/Camelia (1.2 million), Marshall-Colorado State/New Mexico (1.2 million), La. Tech-SMU/Frisco (1.2 million), and Ohio-UAB/Bahamas (882,000).

There are all sorts of factors, including time slots, channel and competition. But a whole bunch of bowl games — most of them blowouts, not coincidentally — were down considerably from 2016. The Utes’ win was a blowout, WVU’s meaningless late TD notwithstanding, so the viewership increase over 2016 is impressive.

NO ARIZONA BOWL NUMBERS • CBSSN doesn’t release ratings, so we have no way of knowing how many people watched the Utah State-New Mexico State game.

UTAH, BYU, USU FOOTBALL TV RATINGS • Some channels (BYUtv, the Pac-12 Network, CBSSN) don’t report ratings, but here are the ones we do have.

I give you these without comment, except to say that ratings are influenced by the opponent, the channel, the time slot, what other games are on … and whether a team was having a terrible season so its fans couldn’t bear to tune in.

Utah-USC (ABC, Oct. 14) • 3.19 million viewers

BYU-Wisconsin (ABC, Sept. 16) • 2.27 million

BYU-LSU (ESPN, Sept. 2) • 1.76 million

USU-Wisconsin (ESPN, Sept. 1) • 1.76 million

Utah-Washington (ESPN, Nov. 18) • 1.54 million

BYU-Boise State (ESPN, Oct. 6) • 1.04 million

BYU-Portland State (ESPN, Aug. 26) • 939,000

Utah-BYU (ESPN2, Sept. 9) • 668,000

Utah-Stanford (FS1, Oct. 7) • 631,000

Utah-Arizona (FS1, Sept. 22) • 581,000

Utah-UCLA (FS1, Nov. 3) • 563,000

BYU-UNLV (ESPN2, Nov. 10) • 525,000

Utah-Arizona State (FS1, Oct. 21) • 387,000

BYU-Fresno State (ESPN2, Nov. 4) • 324,000

Utah-San Jose State (ESPN2, Sept. 16) • 294,000

USU-Air Force (ESPN2, Nov. 25) • 288,000

Utah-Colorado (FS1, Nov. 25) • 273,000

OK, just one comment. I kind of thought ESPN was nuts when it aired BYU-Portland State nationally in late August, but there were very few games that day and, clearly, nearly a million football fans were hungry to see college football.