even if you're 11 million fans strong, how many of those fans are watching together on one TV set?

You're still slight majority of viewers independent of either team. That's the whole point.

Where the money counts in CFB and in sports, are the big games and the tier 1 content.

Fan base is part of the equation but outside the major blue bloods, the discrepancies between programs disappear quickly within the margins of big games.

BYU has a large fan base. But it's not overwhelmingly higher than Utah. You don't see it often in the viewership numbers.

Where you'd see the BYU base balloon is when a top 10 BYU team is favored or within a FG odds against a top 10 blue blood in a high profile game. Doesn't happen often though. Maybe 1-2 a decade. So they can't really relate. To them, it's all about fan base because that's the top selling point.

For Utah, It's happening every year now. I think that's the confusion.