SI

Ohio State Fans Are Livid With Fox, but Money Will Always Rule in Sports

The Buckeyes close their season with six straight noon kickoffs, leading to backlash.

Jimmy Traina

Ohio State has become a permanent fixture in Fox's Noon window.
Ohio State has become a permanent fixture in Fox's Noon window. / Mateo Rosiles/ Avalanche-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

1. While the NFL tends to garner a lot of attention around poor scheduling and the need for flexing, college football usually doesn’t have massive scheduling controversies.


But that has changed.

It was announced Monday that the Buckeyes’ game against undefeated Indiana on Nov. 23 will be played at noon on Fox. This means Ohio State’s final six games of the 2024 regular season will have been noon kickoffs. This has Buckeyes fans livid. Just check the replies to this tweet.

Buckeyes fans are pissed that they are constantly being denied the prime-time window, the hours of tailgating during the day and the overall night-game atmosphere. Plus, college kids aren't fond of waking up early.

But this is what happens when 1) TV money dictates everything in sports and 2) The Big Ten has a down season.

Fox owns the noon window on Saturdays. No college football team generates better ratings than Ohio State, so the school is always going to be desirable to Fox. The Buckeyes' game against Penn State two weeks ago (also a noon kickoff) drew 9.4 million viewers.

The only college football game to draw more viewers this season was Ohio State–Oregon, which aired at night on NBC and pulled in 10.4 million viewers.

Normally, Michigan would’ve gotten some of the noon slots, but the Wolverines stink this season. Indiana is undefeated, but the Hoosiers are not a TV draw. Oregon plays on the West Coast, so giving them noon ET slots is not ideal. There’s really nowhere else for Fox to go, so the Buckeyes always get selected.

It’s a bummer for their fans, and I get that, but there’s really nothing anyone can do. You can say, “Oh, there should be a limit on the number of noon games a school can have in one season, like the NFL has a limit on the amount of prime-time games a team can have in one season,” but the issue with that is the TV contracts are signed, sealed and delivered. Nothing is getting changed right now.

The controversy surrounding Ohio State and the noon kickoffs has gotten so heated that Fox’s Joel Klatt weighed in Monday, but Klatt has no credibility here because he’s not going to go on Twitter and say, “Terrible job by Fox always screwing over the Ohio State fan,” since he works for Fox, gets paid by Fox and calls the noon game.

Klatt said a lot there with three tweets, but all he needed to say was, “As always with all things sports, Fox picking Ohio State to play at noon every week is about one thing and one thing only: money.”

2. The legendary Chris Berman showed he still has his fastball with last night’s “Fastest Three Minutes” highlight package that aired during halftime of Monday Night Football.

Among Boomer’s great lines:

“Bo. Nix. Cortland Sutton, Suttonly the Broncos lead by 11.”

“Blocked by the Chiefs’ special teams, Leo Chanal No. 5.”

“Remember the moon ball Russell Wilson threw as a Seahawk? It’s back in Pittsburgh, to Mike Williams, not on the red line, he’s on the goal line.”

“Jake Moody. At the end he’s missed three field goals, but Moody makes the blues go away. He’s a knight in white satin.”

“Veteran’s Day Weekend in Germany. Really?”

“Eddie Pinero Bread kicks the game winner.”

What a tour de force.

3. Legit question: Should this be an unnecessary roughness penalty? If this is not a personal foul, I don’t know what is.

4. I bet Missouri against Oklahoma last Saturday, so I particularly enjoyed this week’s edition of “Bad Beats.”

5. If you read this column regularly, you know that I’ve said a million times over the years that football coaches are the weirdest people on earth.

Enter Syracuse coach Fran Brown who says he can’t sleep with his wife after a loss because he doesn’t shower when the Orange lose.

6. The latest SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast features a conversation with SiriusXM’s Chris “Mad Dog” Russo.

The radio Hall of Famer gives us the full story behind MLB Network canceling his daily show, High Heat, and spoke about his future at the network.

Russo also shares his thoughts on Pat McAfee turning down interviews with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the Yankees hurting Fox and MLB by losing in five games, the current health of Major League Baseball as a sport, the NFL’s primetime schedule, whether he really took a gummy before doing a recent episode of First Take, and his thoughts on becoming known for being the guy who loves gummies.

WFAN’s Sal Licata, who normally joins me each week for our Traina Thoughts segment on the podcast, co-hosted this episode, which led to the show starting with Russo calling out Sal for owing money from betting losses.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Happy 80th birthday to Al Michaels. Lest anyone think I’d pass up the opportunity to remember the greatest prank phone call in the history of prank phone calls, you’d be wrong.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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