Highest tv rated college football games of all time

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We also limited this list to those calling games on TV, which unfortunately eliminates a host of amazing local radio announcers who would certainly deserve their own list. Trying to make a list of the best all-time college football announcers on TV and radio would be an impossible task. As we all have biases based on our age, where we live and what teams we follow—working on the sideline and in a press box for a decade in Big East country, my personal list might include the name John Congemi 25 times—I've asked for some help in this particular endeavor.

Still more came from you, friendly reader, via Twitter. With an initial list of more than 40 or 50 names, we thought it might be apt to try for a top Sorry if your favorite announcer didn't make it, but assume he or she is "Also Receiving Votes.

Let's just get that out of the way. Are all the caveats covered? Oh, one more: There are a lot of current guys on the list, I admit, in part because there are so many more games on TV these days and in part because some of the top current guys have been around for so darn long. Enjoy it, debate it and hopefully we didn't forget your favorite voice.

Rece Davis is the victim of being a really exceptional studio host who is not ESPN's best option to host its flagship college football show—more on Chris Fowler much later on this list—but he is so valuable in studio as the second banana that he is only given a limited schedule of midweek games to call. Davis is one of the best in the studio anywhere on TV, but he is no slouch in the booth either.

His work calling games could go up against anyone else on this list, as he offers a far more conversational style than some of the more rigid down-and-distance announcers of the past.

That's likely a credit to his work in the studio, bouncing topics off the analysts and driving traffic from break to break. Working an actual football game is a very different task from talking about football from the safety of a halftime studio, but Davis is great at both and certainly worthy of starting off this list of top in-game announcers.

There are an equal number of people who probably think that Gary Danielson should be higher on this list or not on it at all. Danielson, currently the lead color analyst for college football on CBS, has become the most polarizing man in the college football media and yes, Clay Travis and Paul Finebaum still exist.

The issue many have with Danielson is that he is either a shill for the SEC—CBS has an enormous SEC football contract—or he hates their team, usually a tell-tale sign of a fair and reasonable analyst. The thing with Danielson is that he constantly seems to prove the conspiracy theorists right. The other issue with Danielson is that he seems not to care about the resonance of his own words.

After suggesting on a CBS Sports TV show that current Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly will be back in college in two years, he went on Philly radio and said his comment was "meaningless; it doesn't have any effect on it" and "it doesn't mean a hill of beans" before getting snarky with the hosts by asking, "What, do you want me to put my life on this?

At least four times in the interview—once again after suggesting the spread offense Kelly ran at Oregon won't work in the NFL—Danielson reminded the hosts in Philadelphia and those listening to the interview that it "doesn't matter" what he thinks. This is the lead analyst for a major network going on radio a corporate affiliate network, for whatever that is worth to talk about an opinion he gave on national TV about a local head coach and brushing it off by suggesting his opinion doesn't matter.

Jesse Palmer is probably too young to be on any list of all-time greats at anything—other than maybe all-time great Bachelors or something—but his work on television since burning out in the NFL and, for a cup of coffee, the CFL, has been stellar.

Note: his football work on television. He understands the proper pacing of both studio work insert a nod to the great John Saunders here and in-game analysts. He's been adept at calling games in both three-man and two-man booths, and his insights are usually spot on. If there is one knock on Palmer, it's that he is a little too perfect with everything, which makes him come off as rehearsed and robotic, which is why he excels more at the in-game analysis than studio work.

It's much harder to sound like a robot when you are reacting to what just happened. ESPN has some good young college football talent it needs to keep in-house. Fans of Chris Spielman or Matt Millen, if he has any, might be super mad with this particular choice. There is no denying Ara Parseghian's impact on the game of college football, but it wasn't just limited to his work as the Notre Dame head football coach. From his biography in the Northwestern University Hall of Fame:.

Parseghian hosted "Ara's Sports World," a popular weekly television series in that encouraged all age groups to participate in sports. Parseghian will not be the last person on this list to have a connection to Notre Dame. Note: Paul Hornung does not make this list, as I always reference him as a radio analyst, though I did find clips of him doing television. It was a can of worms I decided to keep closed.

I'm going to age myself for a moment. Haden obviously has a stronger connection historically to USC than Notre Dame, but he became such a mainstay on Notre Dame's nationally televised games on NBC that it was hard for someone my age watching the Irish every week to know him as anything else.

Haden made this list instead of Mayock based on his tenure at the position. Note: Tom Hammond, who worked with Haden and Mayock as well as a host of other analysts, did not make the list but should be mentioned somewhere, so here he is. Of all the clips I've found to accompany these names, the above clip of Haden talking about how he handled calling the USC-Notre Dame rivalry is one of the most candid, and one of my favorites.

Is a game close and late? Someone call Joe Tessitore. Wait, he's probably already there. From a Sports Illustrated column by Stewart Mandel:. Joe Tessitore possesses a magical ability to spark fourth-quarter comebacks and crazy last-second endings. At least, it seems that way. During the season, Tessitore and his broadcast crew began a tradition. When the moment feels right, just as it seems like one team is about to pull away from the other, Tessitore turns to the in-booth camera during a commercial break and sprinkles imaginary pixie dust on the field.

Tessitore got his start at ESPN with boxing, but he has worked his way up the college football ladder at the Worldwide Leader to be one its top—and buzzworthy—names. Speaking of close and late, nobody in the history of announcing has been better at calling college sporting events that are close and late than Gus Johnson. While he is surely more adept at calling basketball than football, Johnson's work calling college football games, now for the Fox Sports networks, always gets people talking.

He is, without question, the most excitable play-by-play man in the game, which pairs very well with the pageantry and bombast of college sports. As exciting as Gus Johnson is calling college football games for Fox, he's buoyed by his booth partner, Charles Davis. Davis is one of the best analysts of the college game around today, a skill he not only uses while doing color commentary during games, but something he has also translated incredibly well to his NFL draft work for NFL Network.

The only knock on Davis is that he seems to be seeking reassurance from his partners—be it in the booth or especially on set—to echo his point, essentially goading the audience into agreeing by association rather than virtue.

He doesn't need to do that. Our college football lead writer Michael Felder added this: "Charles Davis and [Mike] Mayock both know what they're talking about and aren't given to overstatement, which goes a long way for me. I'm admittedly in the minority where casual viewers are concerned, I just want raw info and analysis, and they both deliver. It's hard for anyone to stand out when paired with Johnson as a play-by-play man, but Davis does the job eloquently. I had bar nachos and got a stomach virus early in the morning.

Rough after rooting for Sc. I kind of figured the semifinal games to be at the top, well atleast Ohio State vs Bama. By all accounts, 58M households had a TV and 1 in 4 watched the game. That is my 1. That was an alltime classic. The game of the week was really the game of the week back then. Member since Nov posts Online. However, that list only covers the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar bowl games, plus separate national championship games added to the schedule in and this year's playoff.

Data for other games was not available from Nielsen. I knew this list was off. The Fiesta Bowl Miami vs. Penn State and the Sugar Bowl Alabama vs. Return to Board. Jump to page. The championship game could get an audience boost both because of the novelty of the first-ever playoff and by the fact that one of the participants - Ohio State - is from a state with multiple large TV markets. See list of most watched games at bottom of this story.

Working against the potential for a record audience, however, is that the game is on cable channel ESPN. The biggest audiences for the major bowl games and national title games over the last several years have been for games broadcast on network television, the Northeast Ohio Media Group found in researching estimates from Nielsen. That game was watched by an estimated This year's two semifinals games were the two most watched programs in cable history , ESPN announced, based on its research of Nielsen data.