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Texas win over Notre Dame breaks attendance record, draws ‘massive’ viewership

All of the viewers.

NCAA Football: Notre Dame at Texas Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

The eyes of the college football world were truly on Austin on Sunday evening as the Texas Longhorns defeated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in a double-overtime thriller in front of a school-record crowd of 102,315.

The game also drew what ESPN terms as “massive” viewership on television and across platforms — it drew an overnight rating of 7.0, making it the second-most viewed season-opening game in ESPN/ABC history, coming in behind Florida State-Miami in 2005.

There were also 786,000 unique viewers tuned in on WatchESPN, a regular-season record for that service.

Combined, the viewership set an opening-weekend record:

Quite a statement about the appeal of the two programs as the ‘Horns made a statement about the program’s future.