The 2020 men’s sports calendar was marked by declining ratings — and college football was no exception. But to say that ratings bounced back during this season’s Week 1 would be a major understatement. 

Excluding Bowl season, the most-viewed games in 2019 drew up to 16 million viewers, while only one game in 2020 even topped 10 million, according to SportsMediaWatch data compiled by The Athletic.

Despite this, the SEC negotiated a media deal with Disney/ESPN for $3 billion — showing confidence in college football’s popularity despite the dip. 

It looks like they were right. Whatever apathy fans felt last year has evaporated. Last week, both ESPN and Fox notched milestones compared with recent years. The high ratings suggest that deal wasn’t inflated, and it bodes well for the Big Ten and Pac-12 as they gear up to renegotiate their contracts.

Thursday’s Ohio State-Minnesota game was Fox’s most-watched Week 1 game in history, averaging 6.3 million viewers, the network announced. It also ranked in the top three for regular-season games on streaming.

On Saturday, ABC had its “best” triple-header since 2017, ESPN said. The most popular matchup, Georgia-Clemson, averaged about 8 million viewers, up 16% from 2019 and “on track” to be the second most-viewed “Kickoff Saturday” game in 15 years on any network. 

The triple-header included Oklahoma-Tulane — not exactly a marquee matchup. It definitely drew interest later in the game, however, as the unranked Green Wave made a run to beat the then-No. 2 Sooners less than one week after Hurricane Ida upended their season.

And on Sunday, the prime-time Notre Dame-FSU game on ABC averaged 7.1 million viewers, becoming the second-most-viewed “Opening Week Sunday” game since the network started keeping records in 1996.

Power 5 football “continued to dominate” ratings while other sports dipped, Octagon Senior Vice President of Global Media Rights Consulting, Daniel Cohen, told FOS in December. It looks like that sentiment is true now more than ever.

Last year, teams often limited capacity to 25% or lower. The Big Ten didn’t have any fans at all. And schools in California had to play some home games out of the state due to restrictions.

But this year, teams have eased COVID attendance restrictions. Fans returned in droves for Week 1 matchups, packing stadiums.

It’s not just the booming cheers and in-game traditions that fans brought back. In 2019, FBS teams earned $1.5 billion in ticket sales across sports, according to Knight Commission data — with football as a main contributor. That’s about 17% of all revenue.  

Last year, that number was slashed and schools missed out on millions. 

Now that fans are back, they’ve begun to return lost athletic department revenue from pandemic restrictions.

Just look at these staggering numbers: At least seven games with SEC teams drew at least 70,000 fans, according to a Saturday Down South compilation. 

Ohio State-Minnesota and UNC-Virginia Tech both played in front of sold-out crowds, the schools announced. Georgia-Clemson also sold out, according to the Charlotte Observer. And while it was controversial, a group of donors bought up enough tickets for the Fordham-Nebraska game to keep the Cornhuskers’ sellout streak going.

Wisconsin didn’t announce whether its matchup against Penn State sold out completely, but if you watched the game, it sure looked like they did. Videos of game-day tradition “Jump Around,” for example, showed the stadium shaking as a wall-to-wall sea of red jumped in unison.

“Win or lose, there’s nothing like being back home together again at Camp Randall Stadium,” the team tweeted after falling to the Nittany Lions, 16-10.

This is all happening, of course, despite public health officials’ trepidation over the Delta variant. Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN on Tuesday, “I don’t think it’s smart,” though he did concede that “outdoors is always better than indoors.”