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The Notre Dame Fighting Irish narrowly missed out on a spot in the 2025 College Football Playoff, landing one spot behind Miami for the final at-large bid.
As a result, the Fighting Irish, led by athletic director Pete Bevacqua, opted to throw a temper tantrum. Not only did Bevacqua call out the ACC, with which it has a scheduling partnership, for promoting the Hurricanes over Notre Dame, but Bevacqua reportedly led the decision to have the Irish opt out of a bowl game altogether.
Notre Dame would have played BYU in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. But instead, the Fighting Irish took their ball and went home.
Several Notre Dame fans felt that the decision to opt out would send a message to ESPN by harming the network’s ratings for the bowl game.
As it turns out, the exact opposite occurred.
Pop-Tarts Bowl Ratings Exceeded Almost Every 2025 Notre Dame Football Game
Despite the fact that many believe that non-College Football Playoff bowl games are now meaningless, the ratings showed that fans still care.
ESPN’s public relations department revealed that ratings for bowl games on its networks were up 13 percent year-over-year from 204.
Thru Dec. 27, @ESPNCFB‘s non-CFP bowl viewership is up 13%, averaging 2.7M viewers with several games reaching multi-year highs
🏈 @PopTartsBowl | 8.7M viewers⁰🏈 @PinstripeBowl | 7.6M⁰🏈 @taxslayerbowl | 6.0M⁰🏈 @RateBowl | 4.4M⁰🏈 @LABowlGame | 3.8M⁰🏈 @FRBowl | 3.1M pic.twitter.com/AH0LfKYINz
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) January 2, 2026
Additionally, the Pop-Tarts Bowl had the highest rating of any non-CFP bowl game at 8.7 million viewers. That number is higher than all but one Notre Dame game during the entire 2025 season.
The one game that topped it? Notre Dame’s loss to Miami on Labor Day Weekend, which drew a 10.9 million rating.
Safe to say, the Fighting Irish aren’t quite the end all, be all that their fans believe them to be.