Photos: 15 reasons college football rules in America

Sports

Photos: 15 reasons college football rules in America

It was another record-breaking college football season as nearly 50 million people attended a game in 2015.

The 666 NCAA football programs drew 49,057,966 fans at home games, neutral-site games and postseason games in 2015. The numbers symbolize a phenomenal increase of 156 percent from the 19,134,159 fans that the NCAA reported when they first started collecting attendance figures in 1948.

The game between Wisconsin and Alabama on ABC’s "Saturday Night Football" in week one drew a 4.3 final rating and 8 million viewers, making it the second-most watched Saturday Night Football opener in nine years. ABC's Saturday football series averaged 5,340,000 viewers during the 2015 season.

The week one, 42-24 win by No. 1 Ohio State over Virginia Tech on ESPN attracted 10,585,000 viewers, making it the most-watched opening weekend college football game ever on ESPN or ABC.

The SEC is the first conference in college football history to send at least 10 teams to bowl games in three consecutive seasons. The conference has sent no less than eight teams to bowls in each of the last 10 seasons. The SEC set an NCAA record with nine bowl victories, while boasting an impressive 82 percent winning percentage in its 11 postseason games.

CBS also scored the season’s highest-rated and most-watched college football game with the SEC Championship between Alabama and Florida on Dec. 5 at the Georgia Dome. The game delivered an average national household rating/share of 7.8/17 and averaged 12.76 million viewers.

The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl at Atlanta's Georiga Dome (a college football semifinal site in 2016) was one of 15 bowl games -- there were 41 total -- to have a crowd in excess of 50,000. The Rose Bowl Game was the highest-attended bowl game with 94,268 fans. The Peach Bowl hosted 71,007.

The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on New Year’s Eve between Houston and Florida State at Atlanta's Georgia Dome garnered a 4.0 overnight rating, up 21 percent from last year’s Peach Bowl.

For the seventh consecutive year, the “SEC ON CBS” was the highest-rated regular season college football package on any network. CBS Sports’ national coverage of SEC football averaged a national household rating/share of 3.4/8. This marked the 20th season of SEC football on CBS.

Georgia (1,074,153) was one of 11 teams to have more than 1 million spectators in the stands during the season (including all home and away games and the postseason).

The average attendance for ACC football games -- including Georgia Tech -- was 49,033.

The Sun Belt tied a conference record by sending four teams -- including Georgia State -- to postseason bowls. The conference as a whole set an attendance record with 1,101,365 fans in the stands for games in 2015.

The 2015 ACC Football Championship Game between Clemson and North Carolina drew a crowd of 74,514 fans, the most in the 11-year history of the game. The crowd also was the largest in the 20-year history of Bank of America Stadium, breaking a mark set by the Carolina Panthers in 2014.

Alabama led all teams with 1,354,327 fans attending 15 games in 2015 (including all home and away games and the postseason). Five other SEC teams -- Florida (1,168,182); Tennessee (1,131,422); Texas A&M (1,104,438); Auburn (1,087,875); and Georgia (1,074,153) -- saw more the 1 million spectators during the season.

The SEC led all FBS conferences in average attendance for the 18th consecutive year with an all-conference record 78,630 fans per home game, with more than 7.7 million total fans attending SEC games in 2015. Six SEC schools were in the nation’s Top 10 in average attendance.

The 41 bowl games (including the national championship game) attracted 1,796,498 spectators to the stands (43,817 per game). The total number of fans represents an overall increase of 65,974 from 2014-15. About 77 percent of all stadium seats were filled.

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The 666 NCAA football programs drew 49,057,966 fans at home games, neutral-site games and postseason games in 2015. The numbers symbolize a phenomenal increase of 156 percent from the 19,134,159 fans that the NCAA reported when they first started collecting attendance figures in 1948.

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