Is College Football Gaining or Losing Popularity vs. the NFL?

If you’re on this site, you’re definitely a big college football fan. Odds are, you like college football more than you like the NFL. But, do you match the rest of the country?

The short answer is no, the NFL is holding its popularity better than college football. Over 5 years, Super Bowl viewership declined -19% while college football championship viewing declined -24%. More recently, in 2024, the CFB Playoff and New Years Six games increased in viewership 12% from the previous year, whereas the average NFL primetime game increased in viewership by 7% from the previous year. This shows that College Football likely is increasing in viewership at a greater rate than the NFL. Of course, those numbers don’t tell the full story.

One things certain, and that’s that NFL has a firm hold on the number one sport in the country. 165 million unique people viewed NFL games last season. College football land at somewhere between half and one quarter of that depending on what metric you use.

However, many points indicate that CFB is experiencing incremental growth. The 2024 College Football Playoff and New Years Six games had the greatest viewership in their history. College Football TV ratings had grown ever since the introduction of the playoff, before falling during the COVID era (note, NFL ratings fell during this time too). Merchandise sales, though not always the most correlated, point in this direction too. Following Georgia’s National Championship, Fanatics saw record sales for college licensed merchandise.

The 2025-26 season solidified this growth, proving that the expanded 12-team playoff is a massive engine for the sport’s reach. College football viewership hit new all-time records, with total viewing time across all Nielsen-rated networks surging by 9% to over 179 billion minutes. While the NFL remains the undisputed king—averaging 18.7 million viewers per regular-season game in 2025—college football is making its own case for “NFL-style” numbers during its biggest moments. For instance, the CFP quarterfinals averaged 19.3 million viewers, a 14% increase over the previous year, with Indiana’s victory over Alabama drawing a staggering 23.9 million viewers. Even non-playoff bowl games saw a 13% jump in viewership, proving that despite the NFL’s massive footprint, the American appetite for the pageantry and high stakes of the college game has never been higher.

It seems clear that College Football has had a resurgence following the decline in ratings from the COVID era, and appears to be growing at a faster rate than the NFL when comparing the sports’ respective tentpole moments. Hopefully, intriguing matchups and the unbeatable culture college football brings help make this the biggest sport in the country.

Read more about College Football’s popularity in our article about How Many D1 College Football Teams There Are!

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