On Wednesday, Fox Sports announced its full slate of Friday night college football games, and to the surprise of no one, teams that left the Pac-12 are prominently featured.
Fox College Football Friday begins its 12-week run on September 13, and former Pac-12 schools are featured in eight of the weeks. Nine of the matchups are Big Ten conference games, with two others being Big 12 conference games. The season ends with the Mountain West Championship on December 6.
https://twitter.com/FOXSportsPR/status/1793356365471080756
Notably, Big Ten powers Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State aren’t featured at all, which isn’t a shock.
There is no game scheduled for November 1, presumably due to a possible World Series game. The schedule for the 2024 World Series has yet to be announced.
Here’s the full slate.
- September 13: Arizona at Kansas State, 8 p.m. ET
- September 20: Illinois at Nebraska, 8 p.m. ET
- September 27: Washington at Rutgers, 8 p.m. ET
- October 4: Michigan State at Oregon, 9 p.m. ET
- October 11: Northwestern at Maryland, 8 p.m. ET
- October 18: Oregon at Purdue, 8 p.m. ET
- October 25: Rutgers at USC, 11 p.m. ET
- November 8: Iowa at UCLA, 9 p.m. ET
- November 15: UCLA at Washington, 9 p.m. ET
- November 22: Purdue at Michigan State, 8 p.m. ET
- November 29: Utah at UCF, 8 p.m. ET
- December 6: Mountain West Championship, 8 p.m. ET
In March, Fox announced it would be airing Friday night college football in the fall after WWE SmackDown‘s departure. Originally set to move to USA Network in October, SmackDown will instead head back to USA on September 13, the same date of Fox’s first Friday night college football game.
Following the college football season, Fox is expected to continue airing sports on Friday nights, including college basketball.
The possibility of Friday night games in the Big Ten has been a hot-button issue for years. The conference announced it would play Friday night games back in 2016, leading to a six-game schedule for the 2017 season. That schedule was later pared back to just four games following complaints from Northwestern. Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State also opposed the plan, and an Iowa state legislator was so fed up that he attempted to ban Iowa and Iowa State from hosting Friday night games.
