For years, it seems pretty indisputable that of all the major sports, college football remains the most under-covered.
Yes, there are a million college football podcasts and blogs who cover the sport. And we all know it's a 365-day-a-year talking point in places like Tuscaloosa, Norman and Baton Rouge.
Still, when you turn on the average mainstream TV show, it feels like they're rarely talking about it. Unless it's to complain about Alabama being too good, or figure out which quarterback will have the most success in the NFL.
Well, if you once again needed proof on how popular college football as a sport is, we got it this weekend, as Week 1 delivered monster ratings.
The biggest draw was, not surprisingly, Saturday night's matchup between Clemson and Georgia. The game peaked at right around eight million viewers, per Sports Media Watch. It was the highest-rated opening game since a game between Alabama vs. Florida State in 2016 that featured the No. 1 and No. 3 teams in the country that year.
For comparison's sake, that is more than five of six NBA Finals games this past July.
And per Sports Media Watch, it also doesn't include out of home viewers, meaning the number will likely end up much higher.
Additionally, Alabama and Miami delivered over 5.63 million viewers, an impressive number considering that the game quickly turned into a blowout.
Maybe the most impressive number though actually came Thursday, when a staggering 6.2 million people tuned in for Ohio State and Minnesota. Yes, it's Ohio State - and Ohio State always draws - but to get well over six million people to a TV set, on a Thursday night, on a holiday weekend seems pretty damn impressive. Especially since the team facing the Buckeyes wasn't ranked. Per Fox it was the highest-rated Thursday night game in college football history.
What's wild is, we're not done yet.
In the next day or two we should get numbers on Notre Dame-Florida State, and it seems reasonable to assume that - with two huge brands, in a stand-alone game, on a Sunday night with no other games on - could be even bigger than Georgia-Clemson.
Safe to say, college football back is.
And everyone is locked in.