The 12th Man is widely known across the SEC as one of the best college fan bases and the rest of the country got a reminder of that on Saturday.
Prior to the Texas A&M football team opening the season with a 23-13 loss against Notre Dame, College GameDay came to College Station and multiple records were broken. Aggieland quickly proved why the ESPN staple needs to return in November for the Lone Star Showdown versus the Longhorns.
Aggies, Fighting Irish and general college fans tuned in across the nation, setting records for the “Worldwide Leader in Sports.” With 2.5 million average viewers and 3.2 million in the final hour of the program, College GameDay set a new benchmark for the most-watched pre-November episode of all time.
Additionally, it was the most-watched regular season episode since November 2016. Per ESPN PR, the viewership was up 47% compared to Week 1 last year.
Despite nearly the entire panel, including Johnny Manziel and Pat McAfee, picking Texas A&M to win a game which they ultimately didn’t, Aggieland certainly showed out to kickoff the Mike Elko era.
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📢@CollegeGameDay‘s Wk 1 show at @TAMU started the season strong as the 3rd most-watched regular season episode of ALL TIME
🏈2.5M avg. viewers
🏈3.2M final-hr viewers
🏈Up 47% from ’23’s Wk 1
🏈Most-watched reg. season episode since Nov. ’16
🏈Most-watched pre-Nov. episode EVER pic.twitter.com/dIQlFaFQdx— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) September 4, 2024