Saturday at home against Indiana in a battle of top-five teams, Ohio State will play its fifth of six consecutive games that kick off at noon ET. Some fans of the No. 2-ranked Buckeyes aren't thrilled about the condensed tailgating scene and malaise that often settles inside stadiums around early starting college football games.
Fan angst in the Big Ten is on the rise this fall as oddities pop up around trends in kickoff times. In this second season of a seven-year media rights contract, the first with three major networks as full participants, did the Big Ten cede too much control to Fox, its lead broadcast partner?
"To be very honest," Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft said, "we signed up for this."
In selecting games to televise that maximize ad revenue -- delivered to Big Ten schools in payments totaling $8 billion through 2029, a record in college sports -- Fox, CBS and NBC are acting as league leaders expect.
Fox largely deals the cards in this high-stakes game. Decisions made by its executives, from the preseason draft of premier games held among the networks holding league rights to the weekly distribution and selection of kickoff times, impact the menu of available inventory for the other networks.
And those choices reverberate on Big Ten campuses.
"This has been a question for the last 20 years," Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen said. "We as institutions decided that the television revenue was important. And we gave up the ability to place games where maybe it would be most convenient for us.
"To say we want the revenue, but we (also) want the ability to place these games where they're optimal from a broadcast standpoint, I think it would be a little disingenuous."
In Columbus, bar owner Eric Goodman said he feels fortunate to service Ohio State's large and loyal fan base. Fans flock to his Yogi's Bar and Grill locations every time the Buckeyes play, but the business owner and his customers alike "cringe," Goodman said, each time they see another noon kickoff announced.
"The early games, we never like to see," Goodman said. "It's a little tougher for people, especially the younger crowd, to crawl out of bed on a Saturday morning. We definitely feel it. I think people are very annoyed, but it's just become the norm."
Michigan State in September and October played five consecutive night games. Similarly, the stretch grew taxing for MSU fans who saw their weekend schedules disrupted and lamented the constant need to spend extra money on hotel stays. The school took measures to avoid a late kickoff on Nov. 2 against Indiana, playing an afternoon game instead on Peacock.
This week? The Spartans are home on Friday, back in the late window against one-win Purdue.
Rutgers played a Friday game at USC after Game 1 of the World Series on Fox that kicked off at 11 p.m. in New Jersey. UCLA played in a Big Noon game at Penn State that started at 9 a.m. in California.
Penn State experienced a double dose of fan frustration this month. Its regular-season game of the year, Nov. 2 against Ohio State, served as a headliner for Fox and its "Big Noon Kickoff" production. Fans and the PSU administration wanted a night game and a White Out, which creates a more intense environment.
"Our night games, I believe," Kraft said, "are the best atmosphere in college football."
The White Out came a week later against Washington. It kicked off at 7:30 p.m. ET, creating a backdrop that accentuated the outfit coordination of 100,000-plus, but it aired on NBC's streaming service, Peacock.
Fox worked with Penn State ahead of the scheduled White Out to ensure it would not be played in the noon window. Kraft said he appreciates the willingness of the Big Ten and its media partners to communicate on issues that arise.
The network and kickoff assignments are "more art than science," Kraft said. The system is not broken, according to Kraft, but he would like to see the process unfold more smoothly around games deemed most important to fans.
"I think we all have presented good, bad and ugly," he said. "Call it what it is. Some things are great. But I think there are other things that we need to look at and continue to evolve."
Noon kickoffs once served as college football's Saturday appetizers with networks dishing the the main course at 3:30 p.m. ET or in prime time. The Big Ten routinely heralded its 3:30 p.m. game on ABC as its gold standard, while the SEC owned that time slot for more than two decades on CBS.
For the Big Ten, prime-time kickoffs were dessert with times announced annually in May to widespread interest. The crowded viewing environment was difficult for Fox to disrupt when it secured the Big Ten's first tier of rights in 2017. After experimenting with late-afternoon start times, by early November Fox found the noon window was fertile ground for its top games. The ratings ensued, culminating in around 10.5 million viewers for Ohio State-Michigan, which was down from 2016 but better than all but one season since 2006.
Fox fashioned the noon window into something it could own beginning in 2018. It set the agenda for the day's football slate and became marketable territory. Big Noon is now a Fox brand.
With two weeks left in the regular season, Fox's noon time slot has won the weekly ratings battle three times. Two of the wins were thanks to marquee matchups - Texas at Michigan in Week 2 and Ohio State at Penn State in Week 10. Both reached more than nine million viewers, and each ranked in the season's top six. The other was in Week 9 featuring Nebraska at Ohio State, which registered nearly six million viewers.
Over time, Fox's data finds that games like Ohio State at Penn State boast ratings about a third higher at noon than they would in prime time, executive Mike Mulvihill told The Athletic. There is some truth to that. This year, the Buckeyes' win against the Nittany Lions in the early time slot generated more viewership than Oregon's one-point win against Ohio State on NBC at night.
"There's a belief that prime time is somehow inherently better, but that's not really matched up by the analysis," he said.
The ratings are down slightly from last year. Ahead of the final three weekends in 2023, the Big Noon window averaged 5.02 million viewers, according to figures published by Sports Media Watch. This year, Big Noon averages 4.75 million viewers.
But last fall also had a different set of storylines commanding attention. As Year 1 of the Colorado-Deion Sanders marriage became a crossover media phenomenon, Fox leveraged its Pac-12 rights to air the first two Colorado games, and each generated more than seven million viewers. The 2023 season's final three Fox noon games averaged 11.33 million viewers, and this year could produce similar numbers with Indiana-Ohio State and Michigan-Ohio State on deck. Big Noon topped the ratings leaderboard just once in 2023 until the season's final three weeks.
If there is a year-over-year difference, it's the numbers the SEC has generated on ABC in the first year of its exclusive deal. Last year, Week 4's Oregon-Colorado game generated 10.03 million viewers, the most of any game before Michigan-Ohio State. This year, three SEC games already have surpassed that number, with the Georgia-Texas matchup hitting 13.19 million.
The SEC's success in putting its best game at night does not make Fox any less bullish about noon, according to a network source. In fact, this is how the system was designed -- for Fox's focus on early kicks to open up the day for viewers in various time windows.
The Big Ten's media-rights package became fully operational this season with former Pac-12 schools Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA in the fold. Outside of a few exceptions, the league's television package includes Fox airing a Big Ten game at noon, followed by CBS at 3:30 p.m. and NBC at 7:30 p.m. Fox also airs games on FS1 and NBC streams contests exclusively on Peacock. Every team must play two games on BTN and one must be within the conference.
In exchange for increasing its payout to help the league land Oregon and Washington, Fox received an exclusive Friday night Big Ten package. This year, it's a 10-game slate. To assign who plays on Fridays, the league straddles a line between providing quality games and holding back high-interest matchups for Saturdays.
"Those three (Fox, CBS, NBC) are paying us a rights fee where they expect the best games to be available for noon and 3:30 and 7:30 on a Saturday," Big Ten chief operating officer Kerry Kenny told The Athletic. "The new balancing act here was working with CBS and NBC, to understand as we put this together, what was their input on the fairness or how we treated each week? In our mind, we're looking for maybe the fourth, fifth or sixth-best game of the week to try and make sure that at least on paper, going into a season, the top three games are going to be available for selection by those three broadcast partners."
The Friday package has created some consternation among the league's athletics directors. Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan and Iowa are exempt from hosting Friday games based on logistical reasons ranging from city resource allocation to university operations. Nebraska previously had the same allowance based on preference, but it was eliminated this year when the Cornhuskers hosted Illinois on Sept. 20. With 4.21 million viewers, that game outdrew Big Noon (Marshall at Ohio State) the following day, which had 3.96 million viewers.
Nebraska canceled classes on campus to accommodate the logistics of a Friday game. In the aftermath, Dannen requested again the same exemption granted to others.
"Institutionally, from a brand standpoint," Dannen said, "I think the Friday night game is awesome. (But) we all have unique campus circumstances."
Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State are in high demand by all three networks for Saturday football, so they rarely play on Friday. Michigan has refused to play on Friday, even on the road, and the league has granted it an allowance. Iowa's university hospitals and clinics are located directly across the street from Kinnick Stadium, so a Friday game could create potentially dangerous situations, let alone a logistical logjam.
"When that happened (to Nebraska), I was trying to picture what that looked like," Iowa athletic director Beth Goetz said. "It's not really that subjective."
But Iowa was willing to work with the Big Ten in other areas. It volunteered to play on Fridays during Labor Day or Thanksgiving weekends and will play five prime-time games this fall, including twice at home in November.
Previously, the Big Ten's media rights contract prohibited outdoor November night games except if both teams agreed to it. With mid-sized Midwestern communities swelling for home games when weather was often a factor, the strain on resources coupled with late-night fan travel was too risky. However, NBC's new contract includes a prime-time kickoff every Saturday. The Friday night contract with Fox increases those challenges on a busy workday.
"No doubt that we've made some concessions about preferences to ensure we get eyeballs from our biggest partners," Goetz said.
"Obviously, Fox, as the televising entity of these games, has significant input into what their preferences are," Kenny said. "There are things that they ask for that we don't accommodate. And there are things that we would prefer on the conference side that you need to balance with what they're trying to do and build in this Friday night property on broadcast."
This season presented several extenuating challenges for Fox and the other networks. It's the first year of full network-partner participation. CBS joined in full after completing its media rights contract last season with the SEC.
The season includes 14 weeks of regular-season play, with every Big Ten team in line for two byes. The double-bye factor, which returns next season, diminishes the star power of weekly lineups.
The Nov. 8-9 schedule, for example, included six Big Ten games. But two were played on the West Coast, which eliminated Big Noon as a possibility because of its 9 a.m. local start and early pre-game show. CBS had the weekend's first selection. It was used on Michigan at Indiana. Penn State wanted its White Out on NBC, but the network already had scheduled Florida State at Notre Dame in prime time.
So Washington-Penn State went to Peacock. And Fox's noon choices came down to Purdue at Ohio State or four-loss Minnesota at three-loss Rutgers, which landed on NBC.
Another diminishing factor? Twelve of the league's teams, including Michigan, have four, five or six wins through 12 weeks. The Wolverines traditionally command prime TV windows late in the season. Not so much in 2024.
"Fox has been a really, really good partner of ours," Kraft said. "The impact they've had on the conference, let's just say, the media deal is exceptional. But I think we're still learning through it."
Early starts can negatively impact recruiting. Schools struggle to coordinate game day visits for some prospects who play high school football on Friday nights. It's a factor for the Buckeyes, who will have played four of their six consecutive noon games at home after next week, in trying to land five-star QB prospect Jared Curtis of Nashville.
"These are all unique circumstances," Nebraska's Dannen said. "And trying to balance those, (multiplied by) 18, I understand the challenge. I have no reservations at all with the latitude we've given our television partners. The reality is, this was the schools' decision, not Fox's decision. What we wanted was what we got."
Dannen's point is solvent. In an extreme case, a Big Ten program that refused to play in a window assigned by the networks could buy its way out of that spot. The price tag would be hefty.
More realistically, when conflicts arise, the league facilitates discussions between the schools and Fox that lead to solutions. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has shown a desire to work with ADs and hear their concerns.
"I think the biggest thing from my perspective," Kenny said, "this year brought many new and complex elements into the Big Ten's TV process - three full broadcast windows in fixed positions, west coast travel that needed to be balanced and an expanded CFP race that deepened the pool of games with a postseason impact late in the season.
"We've been collecting feedback throughout the year from many perspectives on all of those items, and we'll sit down with our schools and networks in the offseason to discuss what worked well and what we can continue to refine."
Big Ten officials continue to evaluate future scheduling based on travel, media partners' desires, exposure, student-athlete welfare and other factors, Petitti and Kenny told The Athletic in previous interviews. Fan angst is important but kickoff times are just one piece of a giant football scheduling puzzle.
"Keep this in mind: There are a lot of things to juggle when you've got 18 teams and X-number of slots and you're juggling multiple time zones," Goetz said. "I'm sure there'll be some evaluation, I think going forward about how that looks, but there is going to be some give and take to be sure."