Alabama Football G01 vs West Virginia 2014

Alabama running back T.J. Yeldon (4) scores the first TD of the season on a leaping TD run during the second quarter against West Virginia on Saturday. The game was one of the most-watched games in the country, according to TV ratings. Vasha Hunt/vhunt@al.com

(VASHA HUNT)

Birmingham was again the top metered ESPN market for college football broadcasts on Saturday with an 8.1 average rating, and the Alabama-West Virginia and Cal-Northwestern games were the most-viewed games across all networks, according to numbers released this week by ESPN.

Top-market status is nothing new to Birmingham, which was ESPN's top metered market for the 13th consecutive season last year, averaging its highest ESPN viewership ever with a 9.2 rating.

New Orleans was ESPN's second-largest market on Saturday with a 6.2 rating and Greenville, S.C., was third at 5.9. Nine of the top 13 markets were within the SEC footprint.

ABC and ESPN, both owned by the Walt Disney Company, were the top two networks of the night across cable and broadcast among households, viewers & all key demographics.

After Alabama-West Virginia and Cal-Northwestern, both of which aired on ABC, the next most-watched games were Florida State-Oklahoma State, LSU-Wisconsin, Georgia-Clemson and UCLA-Virginia.

WatchESPN, the network's online streaming product, produced a 41% increase in unique viewers and a 50% increase in minutes watched over last season. WatchESPN set product records for regular-season game usage on Saturday: Alabama-West Virginia (328,000 unique viewers) and LSU-Wisconsin (13.9 million total minutes).