Pat McAfee Took Shot at Fox's 'Big Noon Kickoff' Before Penn State-Ohio State Game

The ESPN analyst couldn't resist shading College GameDay's competitor.
ESPN College Gameday analyst Pat McAfee speaking on the set of the show on the campus of Penn State University ahead of the Nittany Lions' game against the Ohio State Buckeyes on November 1, 2024.
ESPN College Gameday analyst Pat McAfee speaking on the set of the show on the campus of Penn State University ahead of the Nittany Lions' game against the Ohio State Buckeyes on November 1, 2024. / Screengrab Twitter @FOS

Penn State fans made their feelings about the 12:00 p.m. ET start time of Saturday's game against No. 4 Ohio State very clear. One Penn State student even wrote a blog imploring Nittany Lions fans to boycott Big Noon Kickoff, the pregame show on Fox—the network set to broadcast the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions' clash.

ESPN's College GameDay, which was also in town not far from the set of Big Noon Kickoff, took full advantage of the Penn State fans' discontentment with Fox. ESPN analyst Pat McAfee, with the help of the Nittany Lions fans, took a shot at the rival pregame show.

"This game is not at night, this is a big noon kickoff… I don’t think there’s any people at their set, that's on them, not on us," McAfee said.

And the College GameDay crew kept going. Not only did McAfee hit Fox where it hurts by pointing to their crowd size, but his words seemed to rile up the Nittany Lions fans enough to the point where they started an NSFW chant aimed at Big Noon Kickoff.

This sequence of events made for entertaining television, but it also turned the heat up on the College Gameday-Big Noon Kickoff rivalry.


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Tim Capurso
TIM CAPURSO

Tim Capurso is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Prior to joining SI in November 2023, he wrote for RotoBaller and ClutchPoints, where he was the lead editor for MLB, college football and NFL coverage. A lifelong Yankees and Giants fan, Capurso grew up just outside New York City and now lives near Philadelphia. When he's not writing, he enjoys reading, exercising and spending time with his family, including his three-legged cat Willow, who, unfortunately, is an Eagles fan.