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Come Fan with UsTuesday, June 23, 2026

2012 college football TV ratings: Top 15 games dominated by Notre Dame, Alabama

Television people are excited about Notre Dame playing Alabama for the national championship. Here’s a very good reason why.

Mike Ehrmann

Sports Media Watch has the TV ratings for all the nationally televised games from the 2012 college football regular season. First, the least-viewed nationally televised game of the year: Vanderbilt-Wake Forest, which took on Florida-Florida State and Bedlam and the Iron Bowl, among other big rivalry games, and drew only 99,000 viewers.

From that list, here are the top 15 games of the season so far (crucial to point out this is before the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl happens):

Rating

9.8 (16.2M) Alabama Georgia CBS

9.4 (16.1M) Notre Dame USC ABC

6.8 (11.3M) Alabama LSU CBS

6.1 (9.6M) Texas A&M Alabama CBS

5.8 (9.5M) Michigan Ohio State ABC

5.2 (8.6M) Notre Dame Oklahoma ABC

5.1 (8.5M) Florida Florida State ABC

5.1 (8.3M) Stanford Oregon ABC

4.8 (7.9M) Alabama Michigan ABC

4.6 () Florida LSU CBS

4.2 () Georgia Florida CBS

4.1** Army Navy CBS

4.0 (6.4M) Michigan Notre Dame NBC

3.8 (6.0M) Pittsburgh Notre Dame NBC

3.7 (6.0M) South Carolina LSU ESPN

And the schools with the most appearances in that top 15 list -- worth pointing out 15 was a totally arbitrary choice on my part, especially since it just barely edged out Boston freaking College from appearing -- the Eagles played Notre Dame, you see.

Alabama (4)

Notre Dame (4)

Florida (3)

LSU (3)

Michigan (3)

Georgia (2)

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