The Ohio State Buckeyes and Texas Longhorns did something on Saturday that has never been done before.

The matchup that featured two of the nation’s top-three teams set the all-time Week 1 record for television viewers in college football history.

The viewership reached an astounding 16,623,000 viewers, which made it the most-watched Week 1 game on any network in history. It was the third-most-watched regular-season game on FOX, and viewership peaked at 18,569,000 from 3:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.

The viewership peak was roughly around when the Longhorns scored their first points of the afternoon, cutting the Buckeyes' lead to 14-7. Of course, Ohio State ended up closing the game on top.

For a game that was largely not entertaining from a football standpoint, it truly shows the draw power that both universities have.

It pitted two of the biggest brands in the sport against each other, featuring the best offensive and defensive players in the country, two new quarterbacks (one with the last name “Manning”), and the reigning national champions. Those were the necessary ingredients to be the show everybody wanted to see.

For Ohio State, this is no surprise. It has largely carried FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff, as the Buckeyes were featured several times last year. However, for this game, being in the noon slot was actually a positive. It kicked off the first college football Saturday, and the fans’ interest was palpable.

The bigger storyline behind this viewership number is how it set the tone for the rest of the weekend. After the Buckeyes and Longhorns started things off, Florida State upset No. 8 Alabama in Tallahassee, and LSU spoiled Clemson’s home opening in a top-10 Saturday nightcap.

Then, on Sunday, No. 10 Miami edged sixth-ranked Notre Dame in a classic. Let’s not forget the hype surrounding Bill Belichick’s college football debut at North Carolina on Labor Day, either (although, TCU took exception to that attention and thumped the Tar Heels).

Ultimately, this slate of Week 1 games was a far cry from past years, when many of the leading programs in the country would schedule non-competitive, warm-up, preseason-style games to get their seasons off to an easy start.

As the landscape of college football changes, these marquee matchups will be more prevalent early in the season, and it’s the way that it should be. These games were great for the fans and the teams themselves, and they should become a staple of the early season for years to come. 

If more schools need to be convinced to schedule a high-powered early-season matchup, this year’s viewership numbers are a good indicator of what these games mean for each program and the sport as a whole.