Fox has found major success with 'Big Noon'

For three years in a row, Fox’s Big Noon has been the most-watched window in college football, something it does not shy away from pointing out.

With a large audience expected on Saturday as Wisconsin hosts Alabama, on the heels of a massive audience for Michigan vs. Texas, Big Noon is likely on its way to repeating as the ratings champion. This is especially true when you consider the predictably large audiences expected for the Ohio State vs. Michigan and Ohio State vs. Penn State games later this season.

It’s taken a bit of time, but what started as an experiment has grown into one of the biggest success stories and sources of pride for Fox Sports and Fox Corp. While many fans still detest the early kickoff time (we’ll get to that and, if you hate Big Noon , know that it’s not going away), there is no arguing how huge of a success the innovative scheduling has been for Fox.

So , how did Big Noon come to be? With Saturday’s game in Madison, where the concept was initially conceived, we thought we’d retrace its origin story and consider what the future may hold.

“There was just a need to do something different.”

The year was 2017, and Fox’s foray into college football was somewhere between success and failure. A three-year stint hosting the BCS rights was universally panned and not renewed. It also launched the Big Ten Network , which was successful but had limited distribution and marginal games.

Fox acquired the Big Ten Championship Game in 2011 (without any regular season games, which was an odd arrangement) and started splitting the rights with ESPN for the Big 12 and Pac 12. A pregame show with Erin Andrews flopped and was scuttled after one year, but Fox was undeterred, making its most significant move by adding the “A” package of the highly watched Big Ten in 2017.

But even with the improved set of rights Fox had, the production quality and announcements were viewed by most as inferior to its network peers, and more importantly, ratings typically trailed competitors. The status quo of CBS’s SEC game of the week at 3:30 ET and ABC’s focus on primetime stifled Fox from a ratings perspective.

Aided by the Big Ten’s rule for no November night games, Fox had a decision to make for one of their biggest games of the year when Wisconsin hosted Michigan in 2017 (the network’s first year with regular-season Big Ten rights). As President, Insights and Analytics Mike Mulvihill told the Joel Klatt podcast , putting the game at noon (actually 11 a.m. local time in Madison) was a bit of an experiment more than a planned strategy.

“I think we leaned into the idea about doing something a little bit different,” said Mulvihill. “And the way it came about was that frankly, for some, we were putting our best CFB games on in primetime, and we were getting beaten pretty badly. The reality is ABC has owned that real estate for a long time and we weren’t having much success going head-to-head. CBS had the top SEC game of the week at 3:30 for probably 30 years by the time we came up with Big Noon Saturday . There was just a need to do something different. We had to recognize we couldn’t keep doing the same thing and expect to have any kind of success.

“There was one specific game that really acted as a catalyst for what became Big Noon . The Big Ten has long-standing restrictions about playing primetime games in November. In one of our first seasons with the Big Ten, we had a Michigan-Wisconsin game in November that we couldn’t play in prime. The conventional thinking would have been ‘Well, let’s go at 3:30 if we can’t go in primetime… let’s just go as late in the day as we can. Let’s do something a little bit different; let’s try it at noon and see what happens.’

“I think we did 5.5 million viewers. We now regularly do quite a bit more than that for Big Noon . But at the time, 5.5 million viewers was a big win for us. It led me and others to think, ‘We should just lean into this.’ I think as TV programmers what you are often trying to do, especially in sports, it’s not come up with a brand new entirely new idea, it’s to just recognize something that is already showing signs of working and just lean further into that.”

Now that Fox is more established broadcasting college football, coupled with the changes in realignment (Oklahoma and Texas, both Big Noon stalwarts, are now in the SEC, which exclusively airs on Disney-owned networks), is there any chance Fox would move away from this strategy?

Not likely, according to Mulvihill.

“We tried that one game at noon. It did pretty well. We knew that things weren’t working in primetime, so it was just recognizing that something had demonstrated the potential to work and then amplifying it as much as we could,” he said. “We started that in 2019. We had a good first season. We had a little bit of a weird season in the COVID year, and then we came back in 2021 stronger than ever. We’ve grown ever since, and we’ve been the No. 1 window in college football now for three straight years.

“I do like to think that we’ve created something that is a franchise and will, I hope, endure and extend beyond the time that I’m doing this, or any of us are doing this, and I really want this to be something that 20, 25, 30 years from now Big Noon is still part of college football.”

Successful, but not exactly beloved by fans

For decades, college football fans were programmed that big games happened in the afternoon or primetime. Fox’s Big Noon success is quite simply counter-programming against lackluster games other networks put in the early window. And while noon is the usual kickoff time for some games like Ohio State vs. Michigan, many fans, coaches, and athletic directors haven’t always welcomed the early kickoffs .

In 2021, Oklahoma released this statement upon learning they’d be on Big Noon , which was 11 a.m. central time.

If you think Oklahoma is being dramatic, keep in mind that featured programs often draw many of their fans from greater distances compared to NFL games in major U.S. cities. Thus, a larger number of college fans are traveling from hours away.

Additionally, the local economy of bars, restaurants, and hotels gets a much shorter activity window before the game compared to later kickoffs. Fans attending pregame shows will often miss kickoffs. Coaching staffs detest the inability to get recruits on campus for these big games as many play on Friday nights while morning flights may not be readily available.

Fox has tried to point to the ratings success as fans’ approval of the kickoff times and that the sentiment is slowly changing, but I’m not so sure. As an Ohio State alum, noon kickoffs for big games like Penn State every year hit a major nerve for fans of both teams. Oklahoma’s president even cited it as a factor in why they left the Big 12 for the SEC .

Below are the replies for the 2017 Michigan vs. Wisconsin kickoff announcement, the first Big Noon game that Mulvihill mentioned.

While not scientific by any means, the reactions are more or less the same seven years later.

With Fox’s ratings success, fans’ preconceived notions of when games “should be played” will continue to fall on deaf ears. Schools and conferences took the money; higher ratings are generally seen as positive despite vocal complaints .

How long will Fox’s reign with the top slot last? Competition will likely tighten with the loss of Big Noon regulars Oklahoma and Texas, and ABC/ESPN will add the SEC game of the week. Even with the playing field tilting slightly towards ABC’s 3:30 p.m. and primetime slots, a Texas trip to Ohio State next year will undoubtedly help Fox’s chances if they retain their ratings title this year.

With the ACC believed to be on some shaky footing, keep an eye on further realignment, which is always driven by television money despite what network PR folks like to tell you. Fox would absolutely love it if ACC powerhouses joined a conference with which they have an existing relationship. They could also build a relationship with a reshaped ACC, which would give them more options in the Eastern Time Zone to offset the schools Big Ten’s many West Coast schools.

This is to say that what started in Madison almost by accident and returns to Madison this weekend will be around in some form for many years to come.

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