America loves football and when there is great football on, America finds it. Thanksgiving Day's thrilling contest between the Las Vegas Raiders and Dallas Cowboys brought in an audience larger than any regular season NFL game in more than 30 years.

CBS reports that more than 38.5 million people tuned in to see the Raiders pull off the overtime victory. That is up 26% from last year's afternoon kick. It is also the most watched TV program of any sort since Super Bowl LV in February.

The last time a regular season NFL game produced a larger audience was 1990. On December 3 of that year, the 49ers beat the New York Giants 7-3 in a game that was watched by more than 40 million people. The two would face off again in the NFC Championship Game en route to the Giants' Super Bowl XXV title.

While CBS is certainly celebrating the news, the numbers are preliminary. Full Thanksgiving ratings will not be available from Nielsen until Tuesday.

No matter what the full numbers show, the NFL has plenty of reasons to be confident as the first ever seventeen-game season enters the home stretch. Three weeks ago, the league was celebrating another high, as the Chiefs and Packers delivered the highest ratings of the season with an audience of more than 22 million people.