The FCS had a momentous Friday night last week. Thanks to the MLB Postseason Cornell-Harvard and Arkansas-Pine Bluff-Prairie View A&M games upgraded from ESPNU to ESPN2. The NLCS also bumped that night's Maryland-Northwestern game from over-the-air Fox to its cable network, FS1, further benefitting the two games. The results were monumental.
Harvard-Cornell received 312,000 viewers making it the highest-rated Ivy League game on ESPN since they started airing conference games in 2018. The 2018 Harvard-Yale game and its 272,000 viewers on ESPN2 was the previous high. The 312,000 viewers doubled the viewership of last year's Cornell-Harvard game that ESPN2 aired under the same circumstances.
Despite receiving half the viewers, the latter half of the doubleheader also had monumental numbers. The 147,000 viewers was the highest figure that either Arkansas Pine-Bluff or Prairie View A&M saw in years. It was also the highest weeknight viewership of any SWAC game since 2012 according to SportsMediaWatch.com. The viewership exceeded Prairie View's SWAC Championship appearance last year and was the most the Panthers received since 2018's MEAC-SWAC Challenge when 362,000 people saw them face North Carolina Central on a Labor Day Eve.
Amazingly, the viewership exceeded Arkansas Pine-Bluff's appearance in the Spring 2021 SWAC Championship (137,000), the only College Football game on linear TV that day. With more competition, the UAPB-Prairie View game exceeded that viewership. Like Prairie View, the last time Arkansas Pine-Bluff saw that many viewers was its last appearance in the MEAC-SWAC Challenge when 411,000 people saw them face South Carolina State on Labor Day Eve 2015. The viewership also outdrew the Golden Lions' game against in-state SEC opponent, Arkansas, which drew 129,000 viewers on ESPNU the Thursday before Labor Day.
FCS Football continues to benefit from Major League Baseball's expanded postseason. Hopefully, the positive viewership trends lead to more weeknight slots on ESPN's two main networks.
