Rise and whine: Big Ten football fans cry foul over early kickoffs

It wasn’t even 9 on Saturday morning, but Matt Chmielewski was outside his Airbnb, a few blocks from Wrigley Field, choking down Wild Turkey from a paper cup. The folding table next to him was surrounded by friends and adorned with mimosas. Their shelf life was waning: Kickoff was two hours away.

Chmielewski had driven in from “Ichigan” — a true Buckeye won’t say his rival’s full name — for that day’s Ohio State-Northwestern game, which kicked off at 11 at the classic MLB park. To be game ready (read: a few drinks deep), he and the other scarlet-clad fans had to be up early.

“It’s a little much,” he said through a post-swig grimace.

Ohio State fans filled Wrigley, and their team shellacked Northwestern, 31-7, setting up a matchup against No. 5 Indiana this weekend. But to the chagrin of some fans, that game, too, will be a noon Eastern time start — the Buckeyes’ fifth straight. They play Michigan the following weekend at noon, bringing Ohio State’s number of midday kickoffs to seven this season. All the noon games are on Fox or Big Ten Network, which is controlled by Fox.

A fan standing near Chmielewski had a question: “How about a prime-time game!?” The Buckeyes have played only one at home against lowly Western Michigan.

Fans of Penn State, whose usual “whiteout” game against Ohio State was played at noon Eastern time, have also complained, even crowding around ESPN’s Saturday pregame show to chant expletives about the noon starts.

Is all of this an overreaction? Probably. Ohio State’s early-bird schedule is, in part, a quirk of this particular season. Michigan played six noon Eastern games last season. But it’s also a window into the world of big-money college football, with its silos of power, rabid fans and TV partners jostling for the best matchups. And it’s a testament to the uniqueness of the Big Ten’s TV deal, which is unlike any in the history of sports TV.

The game, branded as “Big Noon,” was conceived of in 2019, when Fox was having trouble competing with the best SEC games on Saturday afternoons and evenings. It worked: The earlier kickoffs have been hugely successful for Fox, delivering the highest-watched college football window each of the past three seasons.

With the help of those big noon ratings, the Big Ten cashed in with record-setting contracts with Fox, CBS and NBC. The seven-year deal, whose structure fully kicked in this season, will net the conference an average of more than $1 billion a year, even more than the SEC collects from ESPN ($700 million). By the end of the deal, Big Ten schools will be earning around $90 million each annually.

With 18 teams, three media companies and billions of dollars involved, the new deal makes scheduling more complicated — and scrutinized — than ever.

In the Big Ten’s old deal, Fox and ESPN split the TV package and held a draft each spring, taking turns picking the games they thought would draw the most viewers. (Technically, the networks select dates and not specific games.)

This year, the three companies drafted, placing games into their usual time slots: Fox at noon, CBS in the afternoon and NBC in prime time.

Fox owns the first three picks of the draft each year and landed the date for the Ohio-State Michigan game first. It avoided the West Coast schools — Oregon, Washington, UCLA and USC — that joined the Big Ten this season because they don’t play 9 a.m. local games. Fox has selected an Ohio State game with a top pick four times; other games have fallen to the noon slot after other networks made picks.

“Fox is going to put their best chance at a rating in that window,” said Bob Thompson, a co-founder of the Big Ten Network. “They’re doing what’s in their rights in that contract.”

The Big Ten has also never played many night games, in part because of the harsh Midwest winters, though TV partners have asked. The Big Ten Network proposed schools play in nearby domed NFL stadiums; ESPN tried, too. Both were rebuffed. (Schools had some veto rights in the previous broadcast deal for night games that varied by school and were focused on the final weeks of the season.)

Ohio State’s fans’ pleas have resonated loudly in at least one place: NBC headquarters. In the previous deal, ESPN could always air another conference or put a game in a different window, but NBC has only the Big Ten night window. The New York Post reported that Michigan and Ohio State can veto any night games after the first week of November and that Michigan will play only two night games per season. Other schools committed to different limits on prime-time games, according to people familiar with the deals.

NBC has expressed its frustrations to numerous stakeholders around the conference, according to people with knowledge of the conversations, suggesting that the network did not understand the full extent of the prime-time restrictions. The network has argued that it was informed of the full night game veto rights (and they were expanded from the Big Ten’s previous agreements) only after the term sheets for the deals were agreed to and announced, according to multiple people familiar with the deals.

According to multiple people with knowledge of the deal, the long-form contracts, theoretically with all the gory details worked out, remain unsigned today. (This is not without precedent in sports TV, but it does lend itself to more haggling among parties.)

The other defining feature of the Big Ten contract is how much control Fox has. Fox launched the Big Ten Network in partnership with the conference in 2007 and owns around two-thirds of it today. A decade later, Fox, at least partly through the Big Ten Network, purchased the rights to Big Ten football games for more than a decade. NBC and CBS are actually sublicensing their games, and Fox is collecting a percentage of the rights fees paid by those two companies. According to multiple people, CBS and NBC are paying around $350 million a year for their portions of the deal. All of which explains why Fox gets so many of those early schedule draft picks.

All of the networks declined to comment.

“We’re looking for the right balance: fan experience, TV,” Kerry Kenny, the Big Ten’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. “Sometimes you get the perfect blend. But sometimes you hope over the term of the TV contract you get it, even if it’s not as balanced for one year.”

He declined to say what night game rules exist for different Big Ten teams, adding that the conference was pleased with its relationship with all its broadcast partners.

Jerry Emig, Ohio State’s associate athletic director for communication, wrote in an email: “We’re part of the Big Ten Conference, which has a landmark television rights deal with four networks with FOX the lead network. We’re highly ranked. We win a lot of games. We get great ratings. We understand why FOX selects a lot of Buckeye weekends.” (Ohio State declined to share its night game restrictions. Former Athletic Director Gene Smith said last year he did not like to play late-season night games at home.)

Yet fans and local journalists have for weeks peppered Ohio State’s athletic department with questions about the early starts. Fans at Wrigley had a grievance for every swig: A season’s parking pass costs thousands of dollars, yet fans have gotten only one full day of tailgating. Others just wanted more variety. Some were convinced the Buckeyes’ homefield advantage has been undercut by early games, since fans are less rowdy. (The Buckeyes are 14-2 in noon homes games over the last six seasons, according to the athletic department.)

Several fans even said they had heard top recruits couldn’t attend home games because they couldn’t travel for early starts. “The takeaway is that college football fans are crazy and Ohio State is in the top 5% of that,” said Ramzy Nasrallah, the executive editor of Eleven Warriors, a website that covers the Buckeyes.

Coach Ryan Day says he has other things to worry about. (Coaches, in general, tend to prefer day games because it makes travel easier.) Some players said they like the early starts. Surely there are fans who don’t want to sit in the cold in Columbus at night in November, and police officers who prefer dealing with drunk fans by daylight.

There is no doubt, however, that whenever and wherever Ohio State plays, the fans will be there.

“It’s killing my body to be drinking this early every week,” said an Ohio State student named Lauren outside Wrigley who declined to give her last name. “I’ve had an ear infection for two weeks.”