Big Noon Kickoff is an American college football studio show broadcast by Fox, and simulcast on sister network Fox Sports 1 (FS1). Premiering on August 31, 2019, it serves as the pre-game show for Fox College Football, and in particular, Big Noon Saturday—the network's weekly 12:00 p.m ET/9:00 a.m PT kickoff window.
Meyer was on the show as an analyst for the first two seasons, but left after the 2020 season to take the Jacksonville Jaguars head coaching job, and was replaced by former Oklahoma Sooners head coach Bob Stoops for the 2021 season. Meyer returned for the 2022 season replacing Stoops. Bush left after the 2022 season,[1] with 2009 Heisman Trophy winner running back Mark Ingram II joining the cast for the 2023 season.[2]
In the 2013 season, Fox aired a college football pre-game show on its Fox Sports 1 channel, Fox College Saturday. The program was unable to compete with ESPN's popular and established College GameDay, with Fox only being able to sustain an average viewership of 70,000. The show was cancelled after a single season, and its role was supplanted by the Friday-night edition of Fox Sports Live.[3][4]
Fox introduced the Big Noon Saturday window for its college football coverage in the 2019 season; the network had aired occasional noon kickoffs during the season before (including, after having acquired the Big Ten's primary football rights in 2017, the Michigan–Ohio State rivalry),[5] and they were among Fox's top-viewed games in the 2018 season. Fox has positioned the timeslot as featuring one of its flagship games of the day.[6] Fox made that decision in order to boost their ratings by avoiding competition with CBS that has their featured SEC (until 2023 with the game moving to ABC from 2024 onward) game of the week in the 3:30 p.m. timeslot, and ABC with their featured game in primetime.[7]Big Noon Kickoff was henceforth introduced as a pre-game show for the new window.[8][6]
Sports Illustrated described the show as being "built around" Urban Meyer (who retired as head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes at the end of the 2018 season, and had previously been an ESPN analyst). Meyer stated that he had prepared for the role by studying clips of Fox's NFL pre-game show Fox NFL Sunday, and Alex Rodriguez (who joined ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball in 2018),[9] as an example of another player-turned-television analyst. Fox executive producer Brad Zager explained that his presence was meant to help provide "intelligent dialogue" to the show.[6]
The Big Lead felt that Big Noon Kickoff showed promise, but that the show's "formal" and "corporate" atmosphere (in comparison to the "casual fun" of College GameDay) led to most of the panelists seeming "stiff" on-air, and exacerbated their relative lack of broadcasting experience. Quinn was considered to be a stand-out among the panelists in its premiere broadcast, considering him the most "comfortable" on-air, and noting that both him and Meyer were well-versed at leveraging their past experience to provide insights.[14]
The decision to move the network's featured game to 12:00 p.m. was met with heavy criticism, as fans argue that it diminishes the fan experience of marquee games played at noon compared to games played at night or in the late afternoon. This criticism has particularly come from Penn State fans, as they argue that Big Noon Kickoff diminishes the quality of the school's traditional White Out game. Penn State typically aims to schedule their White Out tradition for a night game, but Penn State's marquee Big Ten matchups are usually featured on Big Noon Kickoff, requiring the school to schedule their White Out game for what fans consider to be lesser-quality opponents.[15]
The time change also forced some games in the Pac-12 to kick off in the morning at the network's choosing, kicking off at either 9:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. local time, another highly criticized consequence of the network's decision.
Viewership
During the first episode, the show garnered 838,000 viewers, which amounted to a 0.8 rating.[16] A special two-hour edition of Big Noon Kickoff leading into the Michigan-Ohio State game on November 30, 2019 received a series-high 1.6 overnight rating, beating College GameDay (which drew a 1.54 rating) in its time slot for the first time in the program's history.[17]
Personalities
Quinn (left) and Leinart (right) at Michigan Stadium during September 7, 2024 game
Initially, unlike its main competitor College GameDay, Big Noon Kickoff originated from Fox Sports' studio in Los Angeles, and only travelled to game sites in the event of major rivalry games or as a pre-game show for the Big Ten championship.[18] Fox scheduled four road shows in 2020, but only 3 happened, as their scheduled visit to USC was canceled due to Fox holding their crew out that weekend due to COVID-19 protocols, which Urban Meyer later revealed that he dealt with a COVID infection. The first 6 weeks of the 2021 season featured the crew going on the road, a Big Noon Kickoff first. Beginning in the 2022 season, Big Noon Kickoff moved permanently to on-location broadcasts throughout the season.[19]
With Deion Sanders' debut as head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, Fox broadcast Big Noon Kickoff from Colorado's first three games in the 2023 season; its Week 3 edition was broadcast from Boulder, Colorado for the Rocky Mountain Showdown—which ESPN also chose as its site for College GameDay that week—rather than Penn State at Illinois as originally scheduled, marking the first time that Big Noon Kickoff was broadcast from the same site for two consecutive weeks, and the first time that it was broadcast from the site of a game not televised by Fox.[20][21]
Big Noon Saturday is an American weekly presentation of 12 p.m. ET broadcasts of NCAA Division I FBScollege football games on Fox. The branding has been used since 2019. It is generally the game played at the site of Big Noon Kickoff.[23]
Due to the early kickoff times, the package has faced criticism for having undue impacts on teams not based in the Eastern Time Zone (ET), including from University of Oklahoma Athletics Director Joe Castiglione (who felt that a Noon ET kickoff for a 2021 game against Nebraska, marking the 50th anniversary of their 1971 "Game of the Century", would diminish its profile), and Stanford head coach David Shaw (who, in particular, criticized Fox Sports for scheduling noon kickoffs involving visiting Pac-12 teams).[24][25] In August 2021, University of Oklahoma president Joe Harroz cited criticism of Big Noon Saturday when discussing the Sooners' eventual 2024 move to the SEC, arguing that the Big 12 conference would be "last in line" in negotiating new media deals, and that "our fans talk about that. It also matters to student-athletes. When those who go before you, in terms of negotiations for 2025 and beyond, if those premiere slots are already taken up, it impacts things in a material way. It translates into disadvantages in recruiting the top talent, disadvantages for our student-athletes and a detriment to the fan experience." The SEC began a new rights deal with ESPN/ABC in the same season the Sooners, as well as Texas, moved to the SEC.[26]
In the 2021 season, Big Noon Saturday overtook the SEC on CBS as having the highest average viewership for College Football telecasts. That season’s Michigan/Ohio State game (which saw Michigan end an eight-game losing streak in the rivalry) was the highest-rated regular-season game of the 2021 season, and most-watched regular-season game since the Alabama–LSU game in 2019.[27][8]
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