Once again, Notre Dame showed it still is the king when it comes to drawing viewers.

The Notre Dame-Florida State game on ABC pulled an 8.5 overnight rating of major markets on Saturday night; one national ratings point is worth over 1 million homes. Full ratings will be out tomorrow.

The rating was the best of the year for college football thus far. According to Sports Media Watch, the 8.5 rating is the fourth-highest in the eight-year history of ABC’s Saturday night package. Of course, two of the other games involved the Irish: the Notre Dame-USC games in 2006 and 2012 both did a 9.6 and Ohio State-Texas in 2006 at 8.8.

Notre Dame’s large following in Chicago, the nation’s No. 3 market, helped drive the rating. The game did a 10.4 in Chicago, peaking at 15.7 during the closing minutes.

I wanted to share the highlights of Bob Costas’ interview with Peyton Manning on NBC’s “Football Night in America” prior to Manning breaking the touchdown pass record last night.

Kudos to Costas for coming up with a new way to get insights from Manning about the record. He asked him for his thoughts about the previous QBs who held the record.

As usual, Manning showed his knack for always saying the right thing.

First Costas started with a story of interviewing Sammy Baugh.

Bob Costas: “One of the greatest days in my professional sports career was an afternoon I got to spend with Sammy Baugh in Rotan, Texas. It was about 15 years ago. An interesting story about how I got there. We flew in to Snyder, Texas, but there were no rental cars in Snyder. So we drove from Snyder to Rotan in a hearse. I did sit in the front seat though. A lot of records will be broken in the NFL. One record that will never be broken: No quarterback will ever lead the league in touchdowns, interceptions as a defensive back, and punting average. Sammy Baugh did that.”

Bob Costas: “After that, the [TD] record was held by Bobby Layne. He was a different kind of guy than Sammy Baugh or yourself.”

Manning: “I never knew Bobby Layne, but my dad knew him and said he was fun guy with great charisma. When I studied him, I found out what a great competitor he was. Maybe one of the great competitors of all time, at quarterback.”

Costas: “Then Y.A. Tittle.”

Manning: “I met Y.A. Tittle a number of times. That great picture of him on his knees, bloodied, tells you how tough he was. From what I studied, he was ahead of his time. He threw for seven touchdowns in a game. He was a special quarterback.”

Costas: “After Y.A. Tittle, then came Johnny Unitas. He held the record next.”

Manning: “I had an evening with Johnny Unitas at a banquet. I presented him with a pair of black high-tops. I wore black high-tops at Tennessee, and of course I knew Unitas did. We have a picture of him holding the high-tops, and he really liked it. That moment was very special for me. He was arguably one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, and the first pure timing passer.”

Costas: “Unitas finished at 290. Eventually Fran Tarkenton got to 342 and held the record for a long, long time.”

Manning: “I never met Fran Tarkenton. He and my dad are good friends, and he keeps up with me through my dad. I didn’t realize what a great passer Fran was. I knew he was a great scrambler. The fact that he threw for so many touchdowns, he was ahead of his time, and that record held for 20 years.”

Costas: “And then Dan Marino. He was the first to go past 400, and it looked like that mark would last for a long, long time.”

Manning: “My dad has always been my favorite player. You have to have a current favorite player, and Eli is obviously my current favorite player. Marino was my guy. I loved the way he competed, managed the game, and controlled the game. One of my very first games in the NFL was against Marino. We didn’t win, but I always remember that he hugged me after the game and said ‘Keep your head up, you’re going to play a long time in this league.’

I‘ve never forgotten that. He was probably the greatest passer of all time.”

Costas: “And then Brett Favre. No matter how you battered him and knocked him around, he showed up every Sunday and got the record.”

Manning: “I think that all players would like to be able to say that they played with as much passion as Brett Favre. I don’t know anybody else that can say it. I hope you can say that about me, but I’m not sure it does justice to Favre. Nobody had more passion than he did. There will never be anyone quite like him.”

Brook Berringer, who spent his senior year as a back-up quarterback, was such an uncommon young man, Nebraska erected a statue of him in front of its stadium.

BTN tells his story in a moving documentary, “Unbeaten: The Life of Brook Berringer.” The film airs Saturday after the Nebraska-Northwestern game at approximately 10:30 p.m. ET. It also re-airs Monday at 9 p.m. ET

Berringer began the 1994 season as the Huskers’ backup quarterback but was thrust into the starting role when Heisman Trophy candidate Tommie Frazier was diagnosed with blood clots. Berringer helped lead the team to seven straight wins and a berth in the Orange Bowl against Miami. While Frazier returned to start the game, Berringer entered in the second quarter and helped spark a comeback. The win capped off the undefeated season, and gave Nebraska Head Coach Tom Osborne his first National Championship.

As the 1995 season dawned, Berringer and Frazier engaged in a spirited battle for the starting job – a job that Frazier eventually won by a narrow margin. Berringer selflessly accepted his backup role that season, as Frazier and the Huskers rolled to a second straight National Championship.

Berringer had his eyes set on a pro football career. However, just two days before the 1996 NFL draft, he lost control of the two-seater plane he was piloting and died when it crashed. He was 22 years old.

His death rocked Nebraska. Berringer had been widely admired for his attitude on the field and how he represented the Cornhuskers off the field.

“Brook was way ahead of his time,” said Bill Friedman, BTN’ coordinating producer for original programming. “He built a reputation for giving back, and he is beloved because so many think he represents what a Nebraskan should be. His life is a great college football story that happens to take place in Nebraska.”

“Unbeaten” features rare, archival footage of Berringer on camera, highlights of some key Nebraska games leading up to the National Championship and interviews with Frazier, Osborne, and Brook’s mother, Jan Berringer, who shares some of the thousands of letters she received in the wake of his passing.

The final scene is especially powerful. The BTN Originals crew was in Lincoln in September, when the 1994 championship team was honored prior to the Huskers’ game against Miami. The crew captured exclusive footage and an interview with Berringer’s teenage nephew, who walked onto the field wearing a No. 18 jersey in honor of the uncle he never met.

Yes, Kansas City is a great story.

However, the Royals would have been a better story for baseball and TBS if they had won the ALCS in seven games, not four.

Four-game sweeps are no good.

The Giants also will be bad for Fox Sports 1’s business if they close out the Cardinals in five games tonight.

While the games have been mostly great, this isn’t a good postseason for baseball when it comes to maximizing drama.

Baseball truly wins with series that go the distance. The biggest ratings typically come for Games 6 and 7 of the LCS and World Series and a Game 5 in the division series. The audiences really check in for the one-and-done games.

Consider this: with Kansas City and Baltimore completing sweeps in the division series, and the Royals going 4-0 against the Orioles, TBS only aired 9 out of a possible 18 games during the postseason, the bare minimum. Even though the Royals produced decent ratings for TBS, imagine the possibilities if there was a Game 7 in the ALCS.

Meanwhile, in the NL, the Giants and Cardinals both won their division series in four games. Not as bad, but not good, especially with a short series looming in the NLCS.

Here’s another reason why MLB will be rooting hard for the Cardinals tonight. If they lose, there will be no baseball this weekend; The World Series doesn’t start until Tuesday.

Go Cards. Give fans some sixth- and seventh-game drama.

Jonathan Mahler and Richard Sandomir write about the future of Bill Simmons at ESPN. They cite sources as saying Simmons is “furious” about being given a three-week suspension in the wake of his comments about Roger Goodell.

From the story:

If Simmons were to leave ESPN, he could move to another media conglomerate, such as Fox, or to a digital media giant like Yahoo or AOL. (He actually first made his name blogging for AOL for $50 a week.)

It seems more likely that Simmons would want to create a multiplatform business of his own. Hypothetically, anyway, it could include a production studio that makes sports films and documentaries for a distributor like HBO or Netflix; a podcast network; a website; and maybe a YouTube channel.

Simmons will have to weigh the profile, access and guaranteed salary he gets from ESPN against the uncertain promise of building something of his own.

“Ninety-nine out of 100 sportswriters have no entrepreneurial leanings,” said Michael Wilbon, a co-host of “Pardon the Interruption” on ESPN. “Could Bill be the exception? I guess. I’m not ruling out the possibility.”

Then there’s this:

Simmons has a faithful fan base, too — including almost 3 million Twitter followers — though it’s difficult to know how much of it comes courtesy of ESPN, which attracts more than 80 million visitors a month to its websitealone. ESPN has proven to be a difficult perch to give up, even for those with a history of conflict with the company. Consider Keith Olbermann, who rejoined ESPN last year for the third time in his broadcasting career.

“The way I look at things is what is the community around Bill Simmons and how big is that community?” said Betsy Morgan, a president and the chief strategy officer of Beck’s TV network and website. “If Bill didn’t live on ESPN, would that community still have a way to find him?”

Indeed, even though Simmons may be ticked, there’s only one ESPN. His aura won’t be nearly the same if he wants to be the king somewhere else.

Readers of this space know all about my crusade to get baseball to pick up the pace. Usually, I am complaining about the numbing length of games, especially in the postseason.

So in the interest of fairness, I am glad to point out that something unusual happened yesterday: Two relatively fast LCS games.

Kansas City’s 2-1 victory over Baltimore came in under three hours at 2:55. Granted in 1964, a 2-1 game would have been finished in 1:55. But in the modern era, we have seen plenty of 2-1 games push the 3:30-3:40 mark.

The brisk pace was a nice change from the first two games which went 4:37 (in 10 innings) and 4:17.

Meanwhile, San Francisco’s 5-4 win over St. Louis in 10 innings checked in at 3:10. Obviously, the game would have broke the three-hour mark if it was completed in nine innings. Again, it was in stark contrast to the first two games, which went 3:23 (for a 3-0 shutout) and 3:40.

Sure good pitching was a factor. But an even bigger factor was pitchers working quickly.

Admit it, the faster games were much more enjoyable to watch.

Meanwhile, here is a link to a story on the first game of the Arizona Fall League played under the new experimental time rules. Guess what? The game was completed in 2:14.

From the story on MLB.com:

Five clocks were on display — two behind home plate, one at the edge of each dugout and one in left-center field — to alert the players of the time left to either throw a pitch or get ready for the next inning.

Additionally, in all games played at Salt River Fields this season, teams have two minutes and five seconds between innings, and they are limited to three “time out” conferences per game. That includes meetings between pitchers and catchers, coaches and pitchers, and coaches and batters.

While those three rules are only being enforced at games held at Salt River Fields, other experimental rules are in place throughout the AFL.

No-pitch intentional walks, in which the manager signals to the home-plate umpire with four fingers to intentionally walk a batter, are being tested at all AFL venues, though no intentional passes have been issued through the first week of the season.

For all AFL games except those held at Salt River, batters are required to keep at least one foot in the batter’s box unless there is a foul ball, a hit batsman, an umpire timeout, a runner attempting to score, a drag or push bunt, a wild pitch or passed ball. The batter may also step out of the box if the pitcher leaves the dirt area of the mound after receiving the ball or the catcher leaves the catcher’s box to give signals.

“It’s definitely different,” Salt River Rafters catcher and Astros prospect Tyler Heineman said. “We’ve got to get used to it. It might make the pitchers rush a bit when they’re coming in from the bullpen in-between innings. It might take away from their first couple of pitches because they’re out of gas.”

My latest column for the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana is on Tom Verducci, who will play on the big stage next week.

********

Howard Cosell and Tom Verducci don’t have much in common, but they will share a bit of history next week.

When Verducci works Fox’s coverage of the World Series, he will join Cosell as the only non-player or manager to sit in the TV analyst’s seat for the game’s biggest games.

The similarities pretty much ends there. Cosell wasn’t used on ABC’s coverage of four World Series because of his baseball expertise. Just the contrary, in fact, since he routinely dumped on the game.

However, when ABC landed baseball rights in the 70s, Roone Arledge told sports TV’s biggest mouth to brush up on his old Mickey Mantle stories. Cosell still was Cosell, and his shtick had to be part of the network’s World Series presentation even though it was a poor fit for baseball.

When his historical connection to Cosell was mentioned to Verducci, he admitted it didn’t dawn on him.

“I can honestly say I haven’t really thought about it,” Verducci said. “I’ve always been so focused on doing the job in front of me.”

Indeed, Verducci won’t be in Fox’s World Series booth with Joe Buck and Harold Reynolds as a gimmick. Rather, it is about his substance.

Verducci has earned his baseball chops. He went from grinding as a young beat reporter for Newsday in the 80s to becoming the lead baseball writer for Sports Illustrated. He became a regular fixture on MLB Network and eventually began work as a game analyst for the network and Fox in 2009.

Verducci doesn’t just write about baseball; he inhales it. He is a terrific writer, and Fox Sports executive John Entz says his passion and knowledge of the game comes through on TV.

When Fox needed a replacement for the retired Tim McCarver in its No. 1 booth, the network liked the potential of what Verducci had to offer in working with Reynolds.

“Three-man booths work when two guys come at it from different perspectives,” Buck said. “Harold and Tom see the game in different ways.”

Reynolds is more old school, while Verducci tends to use more analytics. However, Reynolds, a two-time All-Star who played 12 years, has complete respect for his partner’s baseball expertise.

“The thing that impresses me about Tom is his eye for detail,” Reynolds said. “He’s able to see adjustments. He’s always focused in.”

Verducci readily admits that he doesn’t have firsthand experience of what it is like to try to hit a Major League slider or to be in a closer’s shoes in the ninth inning. But he has talked to enough players and managers to know what works or fails in those situations.

In many respects, Verducci prepares for a game the same way he does if he is working a story for a Sports Illustrated. He tries to gather as much information as he can.

“I like to think I bring an institutional history to the game,” Verducci said. “This is my 33^rd year covering baseball. I’ve been a beat writer, columnist, studio analyst. All those things come into play when you go into the booth. It’s the entire package, plus the preparation.”

Will Verducci’s rise to Fox’s No. 1 team change the traditional dynamic which calls for the analyst to be a former player, manager or coach? The new media age has created plenty of insiders, who bring immense expertise on their sports.

Seth Davis is one of them. Like Verducci, the college basketball writer for Sports Illustrated has gone from working in the studio at CBS to serving as a game analyst for the Big Ten Network.

The extent of Davis’ college basketball experience was trying out as a walk-on for Duke. “Yeah, you don’t see many (5-foot, 9-inch) Jews playing college basketball,” he said.

Davis, though, is an avid student of the game. He believes he brings a different perspective to the analyst’s seat.

“I’m not going to necessarily break it down the same way that a coach or player would, but I also know that a coach or player is not going to see the same things that I’m going to see or talk about the things that I’m going to talk about,” Davis said. “I can get into story lines, personalities and the evolution of a team and what’s happening in the locker room.”

Later, Davis added: “At the end of the day, it’s really not rocket science. I don’t hammer guys.  I don’t rip people in general, but I can be critical, and I’m just kind of reacting to what I see and what I know.”

Davis will be watching his colleague on Fox in the World Series. Verducci, though, hasn’t drifted away from his roots. Unlike traditional TV analysts who call it a day once the game ends, another part of his day is just beginning. Verducci will write up his game analysis for SI.com.

Once a writer, always a writer, right? Well, not exactly says Verducci when it comes to defining himself these days.

“When I started, you were either one or the other (writer or a broadcaster),” Verducci said. “It probably was an insult to suggest you did something other than what you were trained to do. But as we know in the media world today, there are no barriers. The platforms change.

“Deep down, I’ll always consider myself a writer, because that’s where I came from. But I never would think of myself as just one or the other. I think of myself as someone who tries to provide information and entertainment on baseball.”

This is good news for sports readers who have attention spans longer than 30 seconds.

NBC’s move follows the trend of other sites realizing there is a market for long-form journalism. Well-written stories always work regardless of the platform.

Judging by the fact that Joe Posnanski has two stories for the launch, the site will be a place for him to showcase his talents.

The details from NBC:

********

NBC Sports Digital announced today that it is launching NBC SportsWorld, a new micro-site within NBCSports.com dedicated to long-form storytelling. The new site will launch on October 15 and will be populated with compelling long-form stories, essays, short films and documentaries, including select archived Olympic video. The announcement was made by Rick Cordella, SVP & GM, Digital Media, NBC Sports Group.

Named after NBC Sports’ television program in the 1980s, which featured global content from a variety of sports properties, NBC SportsWorld will be the home of exclusive long-form pieces from NBC Sports Digital’s contributors, including award-winning writer Joe Posnanski, Joe Prince-Wright of ProSoccerTalk, and Nick Zaccardi of OlympicTalk. In addition, contributions to NBC SportsWorld will come from writers at NBC Sports Group’s vast array of properties, including the NBC Sports Regional Networks, such as CSN Bay Area’s Ray Ratto; GolfChannel.com’s Rex Hoggard, Randall Mell and Jason Sobel; and RotoWorld.

The site will also house documentaries and video features produced by the Emmy Award-winning NBC Olympics and Golf Channel Films divisions. At launch, NBC SportsWorld will house:

Nancy & Tonya, in which Mary Carillo looks back at the events surrounding the ladies’ figure skating competition at the 1994 Olympic Winter Games with an exclusive sit-down with Nancy Kerrigan and a one-on-one interview with Tonya Harding.

Lokomotiv, narrated by Liev Schreiber, which chronicles the tragic events surrounding the crash of an airplane carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), killing 44 of 45 people on board, including 37 players, coaches and staff.

Long Way Home: The Jessica Long Story, which profiles Russian-born Jessica Long, a world-class swimmer and 12-time Paralympic gold medalist, who was adopted by American parents as she journeys from the States to Siberia to meet her birth family.

Arnie, which showcases how golfing legend Arnold Palmer revolutionized and transcended the game to become one of the most beloved figures in sports history.

Payne, the story of how golf champion Payne Stewart lived, from the early days when his father guided and influenced him, his first Ryder Cup win, and the tragic end to his life in a lonely field in South Dakota.

“Our SportsTalk strategy of providing readers with quick, impactful news posts multiple times a day has been incredibly successful. However, we will now complement that plan by tapping into NBC Sports Group’s rich history of long-form storytelling,” said Cordella. “NBC SportsWorld will create an immersive experience for our users with deep, thoughtful multimedia pieces written and produced by our talented roster of contributors from all facets of the NBC Sports Group.”

Planned content for NBC SportsWorld’s launch also includes:

Joe Posnanski has an exclusive, in-depth discussion with Dale Earnhardt Jr. about his life, career and relationship with his father, as he celebrates his 40th Birthday.

In advance of Sunday night’s 49ers-Broncos game, CSN Bay Area Senior Insider Ray Ratto connects the dots from Joe Montana and John Elway to Colin Kapernick and Peyton Manning.

Joe Posnanski travels with the Royals from California to Baltimore to get the inside story on their unlikely postseason run.

Joe Prince-Wright profiles Bob Bradley after spending time in Norway with the former U.S. Men’s National Team and current Stabaek (Norwegian first division) coach to get a sense of his most recent and ambitious challenge, becoming the first American head coach of a European top-flight club.

In order to stay up to date with all of the latest features and videos on NBC SportsWorld, users can subscribe to a weekly newsletter published each Friday recapping the previous week’s content. Readers can also follow NBC SportsWorld on Facebook and Twitter.