Arkansas vs Texas TV Ratings Show Bowl Delivers on Exposure Promise

One of the big reasons Arkansas was excited about playing in the Texas Bowl was the great opportunity for exposure, particularly in the Texas markets the Razorbacks hope to recruit future players (and future regular students, but different story/different day).

The ratings are in and the Hogs got what they wanted. The Texas Bowl was the third-highest rated bowl game outside of the New Year's Six bowls (only USC vs Nebraska and Georgia vs Louisville were higher), and only just beneath the Peach Bowl.

In addition to Arkansas, the game was seen pretty widely throughout Texas:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p>For Texas-Arkansas in Texas Bowl: 3.3 national, 6.1 in Houston, 6.8 in D-FW. 16.9 in Austin, 7.7 in San Antonio.</p>&mdash; David Barron (@dfbarron) <a href="https://twitter.com/dfbarron/status/551089581034967040">January 2, 2015</a></blockquote>

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The 3.3 national rating is significantly more than the Hogs drew for their big shutout win over Ole Miss earlier this season, which was on CBS as opposed to ESPN like the bowl games. That game earned a 1.9 rating.

The prime time kickoff certainly worked in Arkansas' favor as those games were all seen by more audiences than the daytime games. For instance, the Liberty Bowl - the game in which many expected Arkansas to play and had a 1pm kickoff - drew just 3.3 million viewers for its Texas A&M vs West Virginia matchup.

Hopefully, Arkansas can build on this and deepen those recruiting in-roads in Texas. There hasn't been any commitment activity since the game so we'll have to wait and see how everything plays out. There's fewer than 5 weeks until Signing Day and the Hogs still have some slots to fill, so it should be an interesting month.

And of course, those ratings don't take into considerations things like newspaper coverage:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p>Boy what a lovely day to wake up &amp; see the newspaper of the 4th largest city in America have Hogs all over it!! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WPS?src=hash">#WPS</a> <a href="http://t.co/vgMPfMt6pS">pic.twitter.com/vgMPfMt6pS</a></p>&mdash; DAVID BAZZEL (@DavidBazzel) <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidBazzel/status/549982659913338880">December 30, 2014</a></blockquote>

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