Fox Sports officially announced its 2026 college football broadcast teams on Friday, with a few minor changes.
The biggest one is that Connor Onion has been confirmed as Jason Benetti’s successor in Fox’s No. 2 booth, pairing with analyst Robert Griffin III and reporter Alexa Landestoy, as previously reported by The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand.
Fox’s No. 1 booth of Gus Johnson, Joel Klatt, and Jenny Taft remains untouched, as does the Big Noon Kickoff core of host Rob Stone, Brady Quinn, Matt Leinart, Mark Ingram, and Urban Meyer. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy is also back for a second season on the desk.
Portnoy joined Big Noon Kickoff last year as the linchpin of a broader Fox-Barstool partnership and the network’s counterpunch to the impact Pat McAfee already had on ESPN’s College GameDay. He’ll have company again, as Big Noon Kickoff will continue featuring appearances throughout the season from other Barstool personalities, including Dan “Big Cat” Katz, who filled in for Portnoy on multiple occasions last year. The Barstool College Football Show also returns alongside Big Noon Kickoff on select game weekends, airing from 9-9:45 a.m. ET across Barstool-owned channels and Fox platforms, including Tubi and Fox One.
The only change tied to Big Noon Kickoff’s on-site coverage is that alongside Chris “The Bear” Fallica, Charles Woodson, Klatt, and Taft, Fox NFL Sunday analyst and former New England Patriots (and Arizona) tight end Rob Gronkowski will join the show as a regular contributor throughout the season.
Elsewhere, most of Fox’s booths carry over unchanged. Tim Brando and former Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner return to the booth for another season, joined again by reporter Josh Sims, while Eric Collins and Spencer Tillman continue their partnership.
Mark Helfrich will now work alongside play-by-play announcer Jack Kizer, effectively taking over the booth Onion vacated. Petros Papadakis has been paired with newly hired Denver Nuggets play-by-play voice Noah Reed, while their former respective broadcast partners, Robert Smith and Dan Hellie, will now call games together instead.
In Week 1, Papadakis will call Toledo-Michigan State on Friday, Sept. 4, at 8 p.m. ET on FS1 with Reed, before pairing with Carlo Jiménez for Central Michigan-New Mexico the next night, Saturday, Sept. 5, at 10 p.m. ET, rounding out Fox Sports’ opening week of coverage.
In the studio, veteran host Mike Hill continues anchoring Fox Sports’ college football coverage out of Los Angeles, joined by college football insider Bruce Feldman and former Washington head coach and 2026 College Football Hall of Fame inductee Chris Petersen. Clay Travis will make select appearances on Big Noon Kickoff from some of the season’s biggest games in the South.
Trent Rush and Will Blackmon were both notably absent from Friday’s announcement.
Blackmon was let go from Good Morning Football in June after ESPN took over NFL Network and declined to renew his contract. He remains with The CW, though, shifting away from the ACC package he worked last year and over to the Pac-12, where the former Boston College safety replaces analyst Ryan Leaf, who took a full-time role with USA Sports this offseason. Rush, meanwhile, is now the Angels’ No. 2 play-by-play voice behind Wayne Randazzo after Patrick O’Neal’s exit from the team’s broadcast booth earlier this year.
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.