In the age of cord cutting and ever-growing entertainment options, the vast majority of headlines involving sports TV ratings are bad. NBA viewership is plummeting. NASCAR ratings last year were the lowest on record. This year’s World Series was the third-least watched ever.



But college football’s 2019 regular season proved a refreshing departure for the networks that paid hundreds of millions of dollars to show it. TV audiences were up — in many cases, way up.



“The SEC on CBS” saw a remarkable 24-percent year-over-year increase, resulting in the network’s most-watched season (average 7.1 million viewers) since 1990. FOX enjoyed its most-watched season (3.7 million), with a 12-percent bump from 2018. ESPN’s networks, which include ABC, enjoyed a four-percent increase for their 247 games (3.9 million viewers for ABC, 1.8 million for the cable networks).



Even ESPN and FOX’s pregame shows and ESPN’s weekly...