I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to compare Notre Dame football in 2014 to 2012 or 2013, but the fact remains – the 2014 Notre Dame football season on NBC was down 3% in 2014, marking the lowest viewership total on NBC since 2011, the team’s last five loss season.

NBC’s year with the Irish peaked far before the season went off the rails – Notre Dame’s 31-0, primetime thrashing of Michigan drew 4.63 million viewers. That sounds all well and good, until realize that in 2012, the matchup drew 6.38 million viewers in the same timeslot, and drew 6.97 million viewers in the 3:30 timeslot in 2010. However, Notre Dame’s home schedule probably didn’t do many favors for NBC – the Michigan and Stanford matchups were balanced out in the early part of the season by games with a mediocre Rice squad and a bad Purdue team.

Oddly enough, Notre Dame’s five games to not air on NBC did air on other broadcast networks – three on ABC, one on CBS, and one on Fox. It’s pretty wild that none aired on cable, but I would have highly doubted that Fox would have dumped Notre Dame-USC onto Fox Sports 1, or CBS would have slashed the viewership of Notre Dame-Navy by putting it on CBS Sports Network. Of those away games, the Fighting Irish’s epic clash with Florida State on October 18th was far and away their most-viewed game of the season. At 13.25 million viewers, only last weekend’s Iron Bowl managed to top it.

What’s this mean? Well, probably a whole lot of nothing. If Notre Dame is good, fans will watch. If Notre Dame is not good or plays a slate of home games against mediocre competition, fans won’t watch. Next year’s Notre Dame schedule on NBC is highlighted by a season opening clash with Texas, and also features games with Navy and USC on back to back weeks and a game with Boston College at Fenway Park. However, the schedule also contains games with UMass and Wake Forest. We’ll see what happens, because it’s really anyone’s best guess at this point.

[Sports Business Daily]