In its past two games, Georgia Tech has made for pretty good television. The Yellow Jackets' games matched or exceeded the ratings for any game played on the ESPN channel they played on that day.
The Georgia Tech-Virginia Tech game, played at noon Sept. 20, tied the 7 p.m. Mississippi State-LSU game with a 2.1 rating and was better than the BYU-Virginia game (3:30 p.m.) and the Oregon-Washington State game (10:30 p.m.).
The Jackets-Hurricanes game, played at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN 2, drew a 0.8 rating, which exceeded the ratings of the Purdue-Illinois game (noon) and Wisconsin-Northwestern game (3:30 p.m.).
A ratings point represents 1,156,000 households, meaning 2.4 million households watched Tech’s win over the Hokies and 924,800 households watched the Tech-Miami game.
It undoubtedly helped that both games were close throughout and decided in the fourth quarter. That said, the Mississippi State-LSU game was a considerable upset (LSU was No. 8), and Virginia was attempting to pull off an upset of then-No. 24 BYU before the Cougars rallied.
Wisconsin-Northwestern was another upset (Wisconsin was then No. 17).
It may not mean a great deal, but it probably doesn’t hurt Tech’s chances as ESPN puts together its schedule for ACC games in coming weeks. Tech's game against Duke is on the ACC Network (CW69 in the Atlanta market). The Jackets will play North Carolina Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. on ESPNU.
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