In New York, football still wins the ratings race, but tennis beats baseball and golf.
That’s how the scoreboard looked last Sunday afternoon, when a sports programming smorgasbord forced fans to pick from no fewer than five major events.
Along with the New York Jets, Mets and Yankees games, there was the U.S. Open men’s tennis final and the FedEx Cup playoffs in golf.
In the end, the NFL juggernaut triumphed.
The New York Jets drew an 8.4 rating in their 1 p.m. season opener on CBS against the New England Patriots, according to Nielsen figures.
The U.S. Open, which followed football at 4 p.m. on CBS, garnered a 6.0 rating for the finale in which Roger Federer beat Novak Djokovic.
No doubt tennis benefited from the fact that it wasn’t competing with another football game.
The primetime game that pitted the New York Giants game against the Dallas Cowboys didn’t kick off until 7 p.m.
In a baseball-crazed town, neither the Yankees nor the Mets could take down the Jets with their TV schedules overlapping.
The Yankees, playing in Kansas City, pulled down a 4.8 rating on the YES cable network, while the Mets drew a 3.9 rating against the Houston Astros on the SNY sports channel.
Tiger Woods is the lead scorer in the Fedex Cup series, but he was last in the ratings on Sunday afternoon.
His performance during last week’s BMW Championship, which took a hit from both baseball and football, drew a 2.1 rating on NBC.