By Staff
Coaching Management, 9.7, October 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0907/bbespn.htm
When the University of Arizona defeated UCLA, 1-0, for the NCAA Division I national championship on May 28, almost one million TV sets were tuned in to the action. The game drew the most viewers ever for a softball game on ESPN--965,000 households, according to The NCAA News.
The overall May 24-28 championship, split between ESPN and ESPN2, drew 5.2 million households, according to Nielsen TV Ratings. It was the fourth-most-viewed NCAA championship in 2001, behind men's basketball (347 million households), women's basketball (18.9 million) and the Men's College World Series (6.2 million households.)
The final game was also the fourth-most viewed single-event NCAA championship on cable in the past year. It followed only the women's basketball final (2.72 million households), and two women's basketball semi-finals (1.79 for the first and 1.97 for the second). The best cable showing from the men's baseball CWS games was Game 5, Tulane vs. Nebraska, seen by 907,000 households. (The men's final was shown on CBS.)
Game 7 of the Women's College World Series (WCWS), in which California eliminated Michigan on a Saturday afternoon, was seen by 791,389 households, second only to the final as the largest number ever for an ESPN softball cablecast. It and the final game beat every Major League Baseball game ESPN and ESPN2 carried on Memorial Day weekend.
Another May 26 contest, Game 10, in which Louisiana State defeated Oklahoma, 2-1, in 10 innings, was the most-viewed softball game ever for ESPN2, with a 0.80 cable rating. That's about 615,000 households, according to ESPN Spokesman Mike Humes.
For 2001, ESPN boosted coverage of the WCWS to 11 live games, compared to three games in 2000. ESPN has been carrying the series for eight straight years, and on July 5, the network and the NCAA announced they had reached a new 11-year agreement for coverage of championships. The schedule is yet to be determined, but the number of games covered will probably remain the same, Humes said.