As the most-watched college football window for three years running, there is no arguing that Fox’s Big Noon has been a wild success for the network (although that reign may be in jeopardy).
Despite all that success, fan criticism of having marquee games at noon has continued to snowball. With Big Noon’s over-reliance on a few programs to fill the noon Eastern time slot, coupled with fanbases yearning for later kickoffs, there is an unavoidable reality that, while successful, Big Noon is failing to win people over.
A lot of the newfound friction can be attributed to Big Noon stalwarts Oklahoma and Texas no longer being a regular option for Fox now that they’ve joined the ESPN-aligned SEC. That, along with Michigan’s rapid decline, which is likely to linger for a while in the wake of Jim Harbaugh’s departure and potential sanctions, has led to a steady diet that includes Ohio State vs. Purdue and Ohio State vs. Marshall (mixed in with some actually good Ohio State games).
It’s quite frankly overkill, with one notable college football personality telling Awful Announcing “They are jamming it down our throats.”
While Fox has tried to change the narrative over time and win over people, public opinion of the Big Noon time slot and Fox’s college football coverage, in general, has slid backward.
With social media on fire with Big Noon complaints, Joel Klatt always the company man, recently took X to defend Big Noon.
Klatt has long been Fox’s tip of the spear when it comes to promoting and defending Big Noon. He often announces the chosen games before they are announced. He recently said that he convinced Oklahoma football players who didn’t like the time slot that playing earlier in the day was good for them because their highlights would be shown all day long. Oklahoma didn’t feel the same way, citing Big Noon as a factor for leaving for the SEC.
Statement from @soonerad on the OU-Nebraska football game: pic.twitter.com/p6fUJBwW5e
— Oklahoma Sooners (@OU_Athletics) May 27, 2021
Does Klatt’s impassioned defense for his employer actually hold water? We’re not so sure. Specifically, let’s dig into a claim he makes about window exclusivity.
“The Big 10 entered into partnership with 3 network partners and those partners have exclusivity in their preferred window,” wrote Klatt. “Fox at Noon, CBS at 3:30, NBC at 7 – When each network gets to select a game for network AIR it must be shown in that networks exclusive window”
Here’s the thing about that: While Fox was airing Ohio State vs. Purdue in the prized Big Noon window, NBC was airing Maryland vs. Rutgers at the same time (NBC has slid around its Big Ten games at times to air Notre Dame in prime time).
So clearly, games can move around. NBC’s game in two weeks is not at 7 p.m. ET. USC vs. UCLA is a 10:30 p.m. kickoff. NBC again slid a game around so they could get Notre Dame into primetime. In fact, with NBC not broadcasting in primetime, there is no Big Ten game in primetime. The window is actually open.
If Fox is saying they can’t play games in primetime, the exact time slot fans were hoping Ohio State vs. Indiana could take place, that argument doesn’t even hold water that specific weekend since Fox is airing a game in prime. That said, Ohio State reportedly has the right to refuse November night games, so this is potentially a case where both the network and the university oppose the idea.
The biggest confirmation that games can, in certain instances, move around in terms of time slot and network actually comes from Mike Mulvihill, Fox’s President, Insights and Analytics, who is thought to be the brainchild behind the Big Noon window.
Appearing on Klatt’s podcast back in May, Mulvihill detailed how Fox traded the Oregon vs. Ohio State game to NBC in return for the Ohio State vs. Penn State game and other considerations. This was done to preserve the network-specific time slots, but Mulvihill essentially spills the beans that Fox and other networks can have games in other network’s windows.
“A third factor is that we have built our Fox college football identity around the idea of playing our best games at noon Eastern, 11 a.m. Central,” said Mulvihill. “We have built that into the most-watched game of the week in college football. We have an enormous pride in it. I take a lot of personal pride in what we have built there. And for us to take the Ohio State-Oregon game… that’s obviously a game that we can’t play at noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific… so it would trigger sort of a domino effect on that date where we would have to play later in the day, another network would get to play in our noon window, and we would have to put a lesser game on in the noon window.”
The funny thing is that this is not shocking when you think about it. It’s frankly preposterous to think four West Coast teams could be added to the Big Ten and that Fox, who essentially owns the conference’s entire media rights, would be shut out from having some mechanism to show West Coast games on a Saturday. Obviously, Fox would love to have those games on Friday night but that’s another capitalism vs. fan/school preferences battle for another day.
Long story short, Fox, CBS, and NBC seem to follow the rules that Klatt laid out in defense of Big Noon 90 percent of the time. But as Mulvihill explained, and as we’ve seen the schedule play out, there are exceptions and there will always be exceptions. Games can air on networks outside of the windows that are sold to us as being “exclusive” to other networks. It’s just complicated and not in their best interest most of the time, so we rarely see it happen.
Essentially, the rules around network-exclusive windows as presented by Klatt won’t be fudged because of fan preferences and complaining but certainly can be fudged when it benefits the networks themselves.
In other words, when it is in their best interest, they seem to figure it out.
