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A week from this morning, big network broadcasts of college football, big time college football particularly, launch with the noon (Eastern Daylight time) kickoff featuring a number one vs. number two showdown: the Texas Longhorns will bring the third generation of football’s Royal Family (Arch Manning) to Ohio Stadium to take on the second-ranked Buckeyes.
What a way to start the season. College football (CFB) – now managed more like a television show the way the NFL has managed its product since Monday Night Football came to the screen in the early 1970s – is starting to get it.
The NFL launches its preseason the week following Labor Day, and their product hits the screen each year now on Thursday and Friday prior to the rest of the league opening its action on Sunday. The Shield wastes no time laying claim to sports programming real estate on Thursdays and Sundays thereafter.
CFB – thanks to coordination with Fox, ESPN/ABC, and NBC – owns programming real estate on Labor Day weekend including some high-profile neutral site games on Sunday and Monday of the same extended holiday weekend.
The #1 Longhorns and the #2 Buckeyes uber-clash – when the time slot announcement was made – had its fair share of vocal complainants.
“This game should be on prime time!”
“The kickoff is way too early for out of towners to get there!”
“Too many people are still doing stuff and can’t sit down to watch!”
We shall see what the viewer ratings show us, won’t we?
I can tell you this about prime-time telecasts of Ohio State home games. A good chunk of the people inside and outside of Ohio Stadium (likely to be near 300,000 in total) will be drunk if the game were to have a 7:30/8 p.m. kickoff.
This makes things very sloppy in the stands.
Heck, even a noon kickoff will still have its fair share of over-served alcohol consumers, but there will likely be a greater mix of mimosas, Cheladas, clam-diggers, and Bloody Mary’s in the morning libations.
If I had tickets to this game and I wanted to see it badly enough sticking to a day trip mode, I’d wake up at 4 a.m., ship out at 5:30 a.m., and (due to traffic in Columbus’s outer area) likely arrive at 9/9:30 a.m.
The atmosphere of the campus to the South and Wast, further fueled by its student ghettos to the North, and East will trigger your adrenaline in lieu of a massive cup of pregame coffee.
It seems to me – with Fox’s brilliant college gridiron takeover of traditionally boring noon football matchups – its Noon Kickoff product has already changed the complexion and quality expected on a CFB Saturday noon matchup.
The NCAA’s senior leadership does not have the competence to either optimize the popularity of either, nor effectively lord over CFB and its television product.
I heartily thank Fox, ESPN/ABC, and NBC for imposing its collective will and constructively commandeering the sport.
Name in likeness (NIL), the transfer portal, and flat-out paying players have turned some fans off from CFB, but one takeaway I thoroughly enjoy due to my respectful hatred of the SEC – who unapologetically did this for decades – has almost immediately seen the effect of its top programs not making the most recent years of College Football Playoff (CFP) finals.
Better yet? No trophies in the SEC since Jan 2023. I hope my current run of schadenfreude continues.
I shall be in another part of the state for most of the day and night August 30, and nowhere near Columbus to boot. Therefore, I won’t catch the aforementioned Longhorn-Buckeye action live. This year’s experience, though, will almost feel like what an NFL fan of an elite franchise will feel: win or lose, my favorite team will be in the CFP come December.
What I see happening already this season has me hoping for further changes – perhaps another restructure - of CFB, and the strength of schedule among CFB’s upper half – not just the Top 25 - to include fewer tomato cans as they’re called in the world of professional boxing.
Perhaps network broadcast CFB games can get closer to three hours than to four hours run time, too.
Frankly, if CFB grows closer in its operations and broadcast packaging to the NFL’s package… so what?
