As he seems to have a habit of doing, Fox’s Joel Klatt casually broke some news regarding the upcoming Big Ten schedule on Tuesday.
During an appearance on The Herd, the Fox analyst seemingly let it slide that the Oct. 12 matchup between preseason top-five teams Oregon and Ohio State will be a primetime game on NBC. The news also helped complete a puzzle regarding the conference’s schedule that first took form on Klatt’s own podcast earlier this offseason.
Back in May, Fox President of Insight and Analytics Michael Mulvihill joined The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast to discuss how networks who share a conference’s TV rights pick which games will air where. And in doing so, Mulvihill not only revealed that the networks — in this instance, Fox, NBC and CBS — have a draft, but that the selection process also allows television partners to trade picks.
According to Mulvihill, such a went deal went down with regard to the 2024 schedule, as Fox — which had the top three picks as the Big Ten’s top rightsholder — traded the third selection to an unnamed network. As the executive explained, networks don’t pick individual games, but rather the dates in which they’ll get the priority selection.
“In the case of that No. 3 pick, we probably debated that pick more than any single other pick in the history of college football on Fox,” Mulvihill said. “There were two dates that were in play that we thought were especially strong. One is Oct. 12 where Ohio State will go out West and play Oregon. One of the best games of the season in not just the Big Ten, but probably in all of college football.
“The other date that’s really interesting is Nov. 2. There are two, I would say, ultra-premium games on that date. One is Ohio State going to Penn State, a very traditional Big Ten matchup. And the other is Oregon coming East to play Michigan in the Big House.”
After using its top two picks on Nov. 30 (Ohio State vs. Michigan) and Sept. 7 (Michigan vs. Texas), Fox opted to trade the No. 3 pick to a network we now know to be NBC in exchange for the ability to move up later in draft. As expected, the Comcast-owned network used the selection on Oct. 12, in which it will now have an impressive doubleheader of Notre Dame vs. Stanford at 3:30 p.m. ET and Oregon vs. Ohio State in primetime. Fox, meanwhile, later selected Nov. 2.
“The choice was so difficult that we just didn’t make it,” Mulvihill said. “We can trade our picks in this selection process just like you would trade picks in the NFL Draft. And we actually came to a solution that I think worked out well for everybody; I think everybody’s going to be satisfied.”
It’s also worth noting that a part of Fox’s calculus appears to be the logistical difficulties presented by Oregon vs. Ohio State taking part on the West Coast, with the network’s premier college football slot being 12 p.m. ET. Considering the Big Ten’s growing presence on that side of the country, that’s a hurdle it will likely continue to face moving forward.
In other words, don’t be surprised if you see Fox making even more trades in the coming years.
