Amid all the talk and hype about the College Football Playoff (CFP), one of the nation’s most enduring sports traditions proved that it still belongs on the big stage.
The 2025 Army-Navy game earned 7.84 million viewers last weekend, making it the most-watched game on the network this year. The closest (but still not close) game was the October 6 Oregon-Indiana matchup, which averaged 5.59 million viewers.
A record number of viewers (9.4 million) watched the game in 2024.
CBS has aired the traditional rivalry between two of the nation’s oldest military academies since 1996.
In 2009, the Army-Navy game became a standalone event, separate from the usual heavy slate of collegiate action on most Saturdays. Now, with the CFP discussing an expansion to 16 games, there’s concern that, to preserve Army-Navy as a standalone game, it will have to be moved to a different weekend.
CBS has every reason to keep the game separate, since it would likely lose millions of viewers if it were just one of several games televised on a Saturday, especially if it were up against playoff games.
CBS recently extended its contract to air Army-Navy through 2038, according to Awful Announcing.
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