Saturday’s highly anticipated top-five matchup in the Big Ten between the No. 3 ranked Penn State Nittany Lions and the No. 4 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes will be the host of both ESPN’s College Gameday and Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff pregame shows in Week 10. But on Friday, we learned more about just how close the two shows will be in proximity to one another.
A video shared on X by Joel Haas, who covers Penn State for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, shows that College Gameday and Big Noon Kickoff are not only in direct eyesight from one another, but close enough to where those in attendance will easily be able to walk to the other show should they choose to do so.
For reference, this is how far apart ESPN College GameDay and FOX Big Noon Kickoff are set up pic.twitter.com/MfIwsASWyL
— Joel Haas (@Joel_Haas1) November 1, 2024
Having both College GameDay and Big Noon Kickoff on one campus for a game isn’t all that unusual. Both studio shows were in Ann Arbor in September for the Michigan-Texas matchup in Week 2. However, this may be the closest that the two shows have ever been in terms of sheer distance between the setups, which could lead to some obvious problems.
It certainly seems possible that we could hear sound from Big Noon Kickoff on College GameDay’s broadcast or vice versa. And what if we see fans overwhelmingly attend one pregame show over the other, making a lackluster crowd on the other?
AA’s Drew Lerner recently wrote about the differences in strategy between ESPN and Fox regarding their respective college football pregame shows, describing it as “One (Big Noon Kickoff) serves as a promotional vehicle for a network, and the other (College Gameday) serves as a comprehensive pregame show for an entire sport.”
The numbers back up that sentiment as well.
College GameDay has proven to consistently be America’s preferred college football pregame show, more than doubling up Big Noon Kickoff in weekly average ratings on the year thus far.
To make matters even worse for Fox, Penn State fans have been calling for a boycott of Big Noon Kickoff all week due to the 12:00 p.m. ET. start time of this week’s game.
Typically, these types of boycotts don’t usually result in much of a difference in the overall atmosphere of the crowd. But with a direct competitor hosting a more popular pregame show just feet away, those to do want to take part in the boycott have a strong alternative at their disposal with College GameDay.
The close proximity of the two shows creates another fascinating storyline ahead of a game with fascinating storylines of its own strictly from an X’s and O’s perspective. So whether you choose to tune into Big Noon Kickoff or College Gameday, it should be appointment viewing for the mass majority of college football fans in Week 10.
