1.4 million viewers tuned in to watch the Colorado Buffaloes defeat the Iowa State Cyclones 24-17 on Saturday, as well as the fans storming the field at Folsom on a rare occasion where the program wasn’t fined for it.
For reference, that was one of the least-viewed games of Deion Sanders’ tenure in Boulder since taking over the program ahead of the 2023 season.
“Still top 8 for the week, but the Iowa State game was one of the least-viewed Colorado games in the Coach Prime era. It's bottom 3 for reported viewers, with three others that were Pac-12 Network games and they never reported numbers,” BuffZone’s Brian Howell relayed.
It didn’t help that the Buffs came into the Cyclones game with a 2-4 record. It also didn’t help that the Red River Rivalry game between Arch Manning’s Texas Longhorns and an undefeated Oklahoma Sooners squad, returning John Mateer from injury, plus a matchup between two of the top-ranked teams in the country, the Indiana Hoosiers and Oregon Ducks, were on at the same time.
Truth be told, though, the declining viewership is a sign of the times for Coach Prime. Without Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, his program is no longer the top story in college football, or in sports as a whole.
Not when Bill Belichick is running the North Carolina Tar Heels into the ground with his inappropriately-aged girlfriend becoming the Yoko Ono of college football, though a Yoko Ono who would’ve met John Lennon before the band even wrote “Love Me Do.” Or with the Alabama Crimson Tide’s Nick Saban replacement, Kalen DeBoer, always being one loss away from a full-on meltdown from the college football world. Or the rise of Curt Cignetti, who has transformed the Indiana Hoosiers into a football-first athletic department.
Other storylines are catching the eye of the viewing public. In a way, it’s proof that Coach Prime has settled in nicely in the sport’s ecosystem.
We’ll see how long he’ll be settled in, given his questionable health situation.