Florida State and the Atlantic Coast Conference enjoyed a banner weekend for television ratings. ESPN reported its best kickoff weekend ever, with the six most-watched games across its networks all involving ACC teams. The ACC’s television powerhouses delivered in a big way. For the first time, the conference had multiple games featuring ACC schools surpass 10 million viewers on the same weekend.
Florida State’s matchup with Alabama drew its largest audience since 2017, when 12.3 million viewers tuned in for the last Seminoles-Crimson Tide opener. This year’s game also set a record as the most-watched mid-afternoon Week 1 game in college football history.
Another notable result came from North Carolina. Bill Belichick’s much-hyped but flat debut still drew 6.1 million viewers, only the third time since 2012 a UNC game cleared 4 million viewers. It underscores why the Tar Heels turned to Belichick despite mounting red flags: they’re banking on him to attract eyeballs and spark national buzz, much like Deion Sanders did at Colorado.
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While some pundits still rank UNC as just as desirable, if not more so, than Florida State or Clemson for potential conference realignment, the Tar Heels remain weighed down by decades of football irrelevance in an era where drawing as many eyeballs as possible means more than academic prestige or dwindling cable rights fees.
