(ESPN and NFL Network also have pregame shows, which do not lead into games. “I'm anxious to look back at this year when it's all said and done, sit with my colleagues in the Big Ten and talk about it, see what we learned,” Smith said. )Another factor in the Fox vs. ESPN battle on the college football front is that Fox, a broadcast network, is in about 25-30 million more homes than ESPN, which is on cable.Fox splits the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 with ESPN and ABC; if youâre interested in a primer on how these games get divvied up, Fox executive Michael Mulvihill As you know, we share rights with ESPN for three of the five power conferences [Big 10, Pac 12, Big 12]. Another sign that they are very serious about competing for numbers in this time slot is that, as Andrew Marchand and John Ourand have This is interesting on a number of levels. For example, the Ohio State-Michigan game has to start at noon… Visit FOX Sports for real time, NFL football scores & schedule information. Itâs a very complicated and very fluid process, but I think the benefit of it is because itâs as fluid as it is weâre able to react to events as they happen. We have the first pick. The Buckeyes played a then-ranked Michigan State team under the lights at Ohio Stadium on Oct. 5, but their season-opener (Florida Atlantic) and best nonconference matchup (Cincinnati) were both early kickoffs. Airing their best games at noon thus gives Fox less competition against other premier games, and as mentioned in the introduction it puts even more heat in the pregame battle. Thatâs why they play the (pre)games. “It's funny, I remember, was it three years ago we were getting killed because we had too many night games,” Smith said with a chuckle, “and now we've got too many noon games, so... You know I don't know what the appropriate mix is. It enables us to make sure that weâre putting the best games in the best possible windows. That means Ohio State will finish the regular season having played at 3:30 — generally considered the showcase window since the television schedules evolved into their current form — only twice this season. It should benefit the fan.Anyways, my prediction is that ESPN wins this battle this season because viewer habits die hard, but weâll see how it all plays out. Big Noon Kickoff is a college football studio show broadcast by Fox. In the college draft, the conferences put together a game schedule [with the dates] but then we and ESPN sit down and actually choose game windows in the Spring where weâll say â and we have the number one pick in the Big Ten draft â weâre going to take the first selection on November 24th. “Talk to Fox, our partners, see what they learned.” Then he added with another laugh, “We're getting a lot of feedback from the fans, so we'll have that.” Ironically neither of those games — at home against Miami (Ohio) in September and at Rutgers last week — were high-profile games so in some ways this has been a bizarro season in Columbus. There is also a recruiting aspect as the noon games are harder to get to for prospects who live far away and play on Friday night, something Urban Meyer noted with some dismay when the Buckeyes played frequent noon games in 2012, his first season as head coach.
Thatâs unlike the NFL, where thereâs an NFL broadcasting department that puts the schedule together and they decide that Packers-Patriots is going to be on NBC and Cowboys-Eagles is going to be on Fox at 4:25. We just take the right to have the first choice on November 24th.