It’s been a down year for the Big Ten in TV ratings, with the SEC on ABC trampling pretty much everyone else in college football. On Saturday, ABC gets three of the four games featuring ranked teams — Pitt at Notre Dame, Oklahoma at Alabama, and Texas-Georgia as the nightcap.
You’d think CBS, Fox, or NBC would have that fourth-ranked matchup. Nope.
Saturday’s matchup between No. 21 Iowa and No. 17 USC won’t air on Fox, CBS, or NBC, despite those networks collectively paying the Big Ten $1 billion annually through 2030. Instead, the game will be shown on the Fox majority-owned, Big Ten Network (BTN) at 3:30 p.m. ET, with USC’s College Football Playoff hopes hanging in the balance.
The reason comes down to contractual fine print, according to Front Office Sports. Each Big Ten school must appear on BTN twice per football season, with at least one conference game. Both Iowa and USC have appeared just once on the network this season, triggering the requirement.
“The conference and its media partners operate within an agreed-upon set of selection parameters, and the networks work collaboratively with the conference to manage the week-by-week selection process throughout the season,” the spokesperson told FOS. “Within those parameters is a requirement that each Big Ten institution appear on Big Ten Network twice during the football season, with at least one of those being against a conference opponent.”
NBC has Ohio State-UCLA in primetime. Central Florida is a three-touchdown underdog at Texas Tech on Fox. Penn State-Michigan State on CBS offers nothing for the playoff picture. So the actual compelling game gets BTN, which is in significantly fewer homes.
The contractual requirement superseded everything else, including the Big Ten’s supposed flexibility in scheduling games on 12- and 6-day windows to maximize viewer interest, except when fine print overrides everything and sends a playoff-stakes game to cable while blowouts get the broadcast networks.
The Big Ten Network owns all the Big Ten’s media rights, then sells the premium games to broadcast networks before keeping the scraps for itself. Fox owns 61% of BTN after increasing its stake from 49% for an estimated $100 million. So Fox essentially controls the entire operation while CBS and NBC pay for access. It’s a great example of why it’s better to own sports media rights than rent them.
When the Big Ten announced its deals with CBS, Fox, and NBC in August 2022, the partnership created those tidy windows — Fox at noon, CBS at 3:30 p.m., and NBC in primetime. But BTN still needs enough games across the conference to justify what cable and satellite companies pay for the channel. BTN needs some meat on the bone, and in this case, one of the better games of the weekend fell into their lap.
NBC has reportedly expressed frustration with its Big Ten contract, which it still hasn’t officially signed, after discovering restrictions it claims weren’t fully disclosed. Those restrictions include Ohio State and Michigan both being able to veto night games after the first week of November, which Ohio State seems to have acquiesced to. Additionally, Michigan is only obligated to play two primetime games per season, so spreading the schedule around to keep everyone happy isn’t exactly simple. Schools told ESPN in 2023 they weren’t informed the historic “tolerances” allowing them to avoid late-November night games had been eliminated from the new deal, which has created some ongoing friction between the conference and its broadcast partners.
Almost every week, the Big Ten faces some type of backlash over a channel or kickoff time issue, and that doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.