You haven’t heard much from the “Notre Dame is irrelevant” crowd much lately.
Sure, the vocal ones out there were chirping a bit after Notre Dame’s close calls against Florida State and Toledo but not much has been heard the last few weeks. You can argue just exactly how good Notre Dame is and that’s fine and dandy, but you can’t argue they’re irrelevant as the TV ratings they continue to bring in simply say otherwise.
According to Matt Fortuna of The Athletic, the Irish and Badgers contest averaged 5.369 million viewers on Fox. According to Fortuna that’s a 20% increase as to the number of viewers Fox averaged on a Big Ten Saturday in 2019 (obviously things were a bit different in 2020). I know a lot of Notre Dame fans didn’t like the 12 p.m. ET start but Fox gets big numbers on these when matchups call for it like Saturday’s clearly did.
It’s another huge ratings performance for Notre Dame, a few short weeks after putting up a huge number for the opener at Florida State. You don’t raise a banner for this success but it certainly doesn’t hurt when you’re trying to pitch your program to 16-year old kids, either.
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