Fox College Football

Last updated
Fox College Football
Fox College Football logo 2017.jpg
Also known asBig Noon Saturday
(2019–present)
Fox CFB
College Football on Fox
CFB on Fox
BCS on Fox (2007–2010)
Genre College football game telecasts
Presented by Gus Johnson
Joel Klatt
Jenny Taft
Jason Benetti
Brock Huard
Allison Williams
Tim Brando
Spencer Tillman
Josh Sims
Jeff Levering
Mark Helfrich
Alex Faust
Petros Papadakis
Mike Pereira
Dean Blandino
Rob Stone
Brady Quinn
Matt Leinart
Urban Meyer
Mark Ingram II
(see section)
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons24
Production
Production locations Various NCAA stadiums
(Game telecasts, halftime show and road shows)
Fox Network Center
Los Angeles, California
(Studio segments, pregame and postgame shows)
Camera setup Multi-camera
Running time210 minutes or until game ends
Production company Fox Sports
Original release
Network Fox (1999–present)
Fox Sports Networks (1999–2019)
Fox College Sports (2006–2019)
FS1 (2013–present)
FS2 (2013–present)
FX (2011–2012)
ReleaseJanuary 1, 1999 (1999-01-01) 
present
Related
Big Noon Saturday
Big Noon Kickoff

Fox College Football (or Fox CFB, for short, and Big Noon Saturday, for flagship games airing at 12 p.m. ET) is the branding used for broadcasts of NCAA Division I FBS college football games produced by Fox Sports, and broadcast primarily by Fox, FS1, and FS2.

Contents

Initial college football broadcasts on the Fox network were limited to selected bowl games, beginning with the Cotton Bowl Classic from 1999 to 2014. From 2007 to 2010, Fox broadcast the Bowl Championship Series (excluding games played at the Rose Bowl stadium, whose rights were held by ABC under a separate agreement), branded as the BCS on Fox.

In 2012, Fox began to air a regular schedule of Saturday college football games during the regular season. Fox primarily airs coverage of the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12, and holds rights to the Big Ten and Pac-12 championship games (with the latter alternating yearly with ESPN/ABC). Since 2020, Fox has aired games from the Mountain West Conference (including Boise State home games, and the Mountain West championship game). Fox also holds rights to the Holiday Bowl.

Coverage history

FSN coverage (1996–2019)

In order to better compete with national networks like ESPN, since its inception the Fox Sports Networks (FSN) has carried college football games from the then Pac-10 conference and Big 12 conference. These telecasts were distributed to individual Fox Sports Networks and other affiliates. In 2011 FSN added a package of Conference USA football games. [1] Many of these games were aired exclusively, aired as a simulcast, or aired on tape delay on Fox College Sports.

Pac-12 games moved from FSN to Fox, FX and eventually FS1 in 2012. [2] The C-USA left Fox Sports entirely in 2016. [3] FSN affiliates continued to largely hold the third-tier rights to many Big 12 teams until 2020, when ESPN+ acquired the tier 3 media rights to all but two of the conference's members (with the only holdouts being the Oklahoma Sooners, who maintained their contract with Fox Sports Oklahoma, and the Texas Longhorns, who have a long-term deal with ESPN and IMG College to operate its Longhorn Network). [4] [5]

After the sale of FSN to Sinclair Broadcast Group as part of Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox, the networks sub-licensed a package of Conference USA games from new sister network Stadium. [6] The Atlantic Coast Conference's syndication package for regional sports networks—which was produced by Raycom Sports—continued to primarily be carried by the networks (now Bally Sports) until 2023, when Bally dropped them amid its parent company's bankruptcy, [7] and Raycom Sports sold the rights to The CW. [8] [9]

Cotton Bowl Classic (1998–2013)

The Fox network acquired its first college football telecast in 1998, when it obtained the broadcast rights to the annual Cotton Bowl Classic held each January on (eventually, the day after) New Year's Day; the first game to be shown on the network as part of the deal was held on January 1, 1999. Fox renewed its contract to carry the game in 2010, in a four-year agreement that ran through the 2013 NCAA college football season.

Fox lost the rights to the Cotton Bowl to ESPN for the 2015 edition, as the cable network holds the television contract to all six bowl games that encompass the College Football Playoff system under a twelve-year deal worth over $7.3 billion. The Cotton Bowl was the only game among the six that was not already broadcast by ESPN. [10] [11]

Bowl Championship Series, launch of Big Ten Network (2006–2009)

From the 2006 through the 2009 seasons, Fox held the broadcast rights to most of the games comprising the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) – including the Sugar Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the newly-established BCS Championship Game. Fox paid close to $20 million per game for the rights to televise the BCS games. [12] The network's contract with the BCS excluded any event in the series that was held at the Rose Bowl stadium, such as the Rose Bowl Game and the 2010 BCS National Championship Game, as ABC already had a separate arrangement with the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association to serve as the broadcaster for the games. [13] Fox promoted the BCS bowl games with the blanket title Bowl Bash. [14]

ESPN, which is majority owned by ABC's corporate parent The Walt Disney Company and serves as the producer for all of ABC's sports coverage, would displace Fox outright as the broadcaster of the BCS beginning in the 2010–11 season. [15] This left the Fox network with only the Cotton Bowl Classic as the sole college football game, to which it held the television rights until the 2013–14 season.

Expansion of national regular season coverage, Big Ten contract (2011–2019)

Beginning with the 2011 season, sister cable channel FX began airing a "game of the week" on Saturdays featuring matchups from the Big 12, Conference USA, and Pac-12. [16] The Fox network also obtained the rights to air the Big Ten Conference's new football championship game beginning that season and running through 2016, as part of Fox Sports' partnership with the conference on the Big Ten Network. [17] Fox also acquired bi-yearly rights to the inaugural Pac-12 Football Championship Game, alternating with ESPN/ABC. [18]

Beginning with the 2012 season, Fox added regular season games on Saturdays to its lineup; it broadcast eight afternoon games and twelve nighttime games throughout the season, with the latter telecasts airing as part of a new strategy by the network to carry more sports programming on Saturday nights during prime time. FS1 replaced FX's coverage upon its launch in August 2013, though some overflow coverage has aired on FX occasionally when warranted; since 2017, overflow coverage has been carried FS2, and before that on Fox Business Network, which usually carries paid programming on Saturday afternoons of little consequence to pre-emption. [19]

Fox's coverage of the 2015 season opened with a game on FS1 featuring the Michigan Wolverines at the Utah Utes. As the first game featuring new head coach Jim Harbaugh, the season premiere was promoted with a touring "HarBus"—decorated with a sweater and khakis in imitation of Harbaugh's on-field wardrobe—travelling to Salt Lake City for the game, accompanied by a group of "HarBros" dressed like Harbaugh. The tour concluded at Salt Lake City's Grand America Hotel for game day; the bus itself was barred from entering the University of Utah's campus. [20] [21]

On July 12, 2016, the San Francisco 49ers announced that they had taken over the Foster Farms Bowl (now known as the Redbox Bowl), and had reached a four-year deal to move the game to Fox and Fox Deportes beginning in 2016. [22] It was also reported by Sports Business Journal that Fox was pursuing a share of the Big Ten's primary football rights. [23] Fox began streaming select college football games in 360-degree video for the 2016 season. [24] [25] The following year, FS1 also acquired rights to the Holiday Bowl, ending a long-standing relationship between the game and ESPN. [26]

On July 24, 2017, the Big Ten Conference announced that Fox and ESPN had acquired rights to its games under a six-year deal beginning in the 2017 season. The contract also includes an extension of Fox's contract to operate Big Ten Network through 2032. [27] The deal gives Fox the first choice of games on most weeks, including marquee games such as the Michigan/Ohio State game—which had been a fixture of ABC's college football schedule for over a half-decade. The game will remain in its traditional noon slot on the last day of the Big Ten's regular season. [28] [29]

Fox promoted its addition of Big Ten football with promotional campaigns focusing on each team; a Children of the Corn -themed commercial focusing on the Nebraska Cornhuskers was pulled after complaints by the school. [30]

Big Noon Saturday, Mountain West contract, Big Ten renewal (2019–present)

Brady Quinn, Mark Ingram, Matt Leinart, and Urban Meyer at the 2023 Big Ten Football Championship Game Fox College Football (53372840962).jpg
Brady Quinn, Mark Ingram, Matt Leinart, and Urban Meyer at the 2023 Big Ten Football Championship Game

Prior to the 2019 season, Fox lost its rights to future Big 12 championship games to ESPN as part of an expansion of its rights to the conference. Fox declined to bid on the 2019, 2021, and 2023 games. [31]

In the 2019 season, Fox introduced a new flagship Noon ET window known as Big Noon Saturday. The games are accompanied by a pre-game show, Big Noon Kickoff . [32] [33] [34] A Fox executive stated that the network's highest-rated games were often those with a Noon kickoff, and that the network also wanted to avoid competition from other highly viewed windows such as the SEC on CBS and ABC's Saturday Night Football . [35] The new emphasis on early games proved successful: in the first weeks of the 2019 season, Fox had the highest-rated game in the timeslot on multiple occasions. This pattern continued into subsequent seasons, with Big Noon Saturday overtaking the SEC on CBS as having the highest average viewership in the 2021 season, and the Michigan/Ohio State game (which saw Michigan end an eight-game losing streak in the rivalry) being the highest-rated regular-season game of the 2021 season, and most-watched regular-season game since the Alabama–LSU game in 2019. [36] [35]

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). [37] [38] In August 2021, University of Oklahoma president Joe Harroz cited criticism of Big Noon Saturday when discussing the Sooners' proposed 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." [39]

On January 9, 2020, the Mountain West Conference announced that its next top-tier basketball and football contracts would be split between CBS Sports and Fox Sports under a six-year deal, with Fox replacing ESPN. Fox will hold rights to 23 games per-season, including the conference championship and all Boise State home games (since 2012, as part of concessions to remain in the conference, the Mountain West has allowed Boise State's home games to be sold as a separate package from the remainder of its media rights). CBS Sports Network will remain the main broadcaster for the conference outside of these games. [40] [41] [42]

On August 18, 2022, Fox renewed its rights to the Big Ten under a seven-year deal beginning in the 2023 season. Under the new contract, Fox, CBS, and NBC will hold rights to Noon, 3:30 p.m. ET, and prime time games respectively. There will be a larger number of games on the Fox broadcast network, and an option to air "premier" Big Ten games in other timeslots after Oregon, USC, UCLA, and Washington move to the conference in 2024. Fox will air four Big Ten championship games in odd-numbered years over the length of the contract. [43] [44] In the 2022 season, ESPN sub-licensed one additional Big Ten football game to Fox, as compensation to release Joe Buck from his contract with the network to join ESPN and Monday Night Football . [45]

In the 2023 season, Fox gained additional access to place microphones on players and coaches in Big Ten and Big 12 games. After having previously shared its in-game presentation with the NFL on Fox , Fox College Football also adopted a dedicated graphics package for its broadcasts, although the revamp faced criticism from viewers on social media. [46] [47] [48]

For the 2024 season, with the departure of WWE SmackDown from the Fox schedule, Fox will introduce an additional weekly Friday primetime window for games. [49] Additionally, on March 25, 2024, Fox announced that Ohio State and Michigan's spring games would air on the network, marking the first time a spring game has aired on over-the-air television. [50]

Big Noon Saturday matchups

All rankings are from that week's AP Poll, and that week's CFP rankings.

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

Nielsen ratings

Regular season

RankDateMatchupNetworkViewers (millions)TV RatingSignificance
1November 25, 2023, 12:00 ET #2 Ohio State 24 #3 Michigan 30 Fox 19.079.0 The Game
2November 26, 2022, 12:00 ET #3 Michigan 45 #2 Ohio State 2317.148.1
3November 27, 2021, 12:00 ET #2 Ohio State 27 #5 Michigan 4215.898.1
4November 24, 2018, 12:00 ET #4 Michigan 39 #10 Ohio State 6213.207.5
5November 30, 2019, 12:00 ET #1 Ohio State 56 #13 Michigan 2712.427.5
6September 10, 2022, 12:00 ET #1 Alabama 20 Texas 1910.605.7
7November 25, 2017, 12:00 ET #9 Ohio State 31 Michigan 2010.516.1 The Game
8October 21, 2023, 12:00 ET #7 Penn State 12 #3 Ohio State 209.965.3 Rivalry
9October 28, 2017, 3:30 ET #2 Penn State 38 #6 Ohio State 399.875.8
10November 23, 2019, 12:00 ET #8 Penn State 17 #2 Ohio State 289.435.8

Conference championships

YearConferenceMatchupViewers (millions)TV Ratings
2011 Big Ten #15 Wisconsin 42 #11 Michigan State 397.84.6
Pac-12 UCLA 31 #8 Oregon 494.52.9
2012 Big Ten Wisconsin 70 #14 Nebraska 314.93.0
Pac-12 #17 UCLA 24 #8 Stanford 274.93.0
2013 Big Ten #10 Michigan State 34 #2 Ohio State 2413.97.9
2014 Big Ten #13 Wisconsin 0 #5 Ohio State 596.13.5
Pac-12 #7 Arizona 13 #2 Oregon 516.03.7
2015 Big Ten #5 Michigan State 16 #4 Iowa 139.85.7
2016 Big Ten #7 Penn State 38 #6 Wisconsin 319.25.2
Pac-12 #8 Colorado 10 #4 Washington 415.73.4
2017 Big Ten #8 Ohio State 27 #4 Wisconsin 2112.97.3
Big 12 #11 TCU 17 #3 Oklahoma 415.93.8
2018 Big Ten #21 Northwestern 24 #6 Ohio State 458.75.0
Pac-12 #17 Utah 3 #11 Washington 105.12.6
2019 Big Ten #1 Ohio State 34 #8 Wisconsin 2113.67.6
2020 Big Ten #14 Northwestern 10 #4 Ohio State 228.04.6
Pac-12 Oregon 31 #13 USC 243.92.2
Mountain West Boise State 20 #24 San Jose State 341.40.9
2021 Big Ten #2 Michigan 42 #13 Iowa 311.76.2
Mountain West Utah State 46 #19 San Diego State 130.80.5
2022 Big Ten Purdue 22 #2 Michigan 4310.75.5
Pac-12 #11 Utah 47 #4 USC 246.03.3
Mountain West Fresno State 28 Boise State 161.91.0

Bowl Viewership

Holiday Bowl
Redbox Bowl/Foster Farms Bowl
Cotton Bowl Classic
Orange Bowl
Sugar Bowl
Fiesta Bowl
BCS National Championship Game

Personalities

On-air staffing of Big Noon Saturday
TeamPlay-by-playColor commentatorSidelines
Lead Gus Johnson Joel Klatt Jenny Taft
Secondary Jason Benetti Brock Huard Allison Williams
Tertiary Tim Brando Spencer Tillman Josh Sims
Quaternary Jeff Levering Spencer Tillman

Announcer pairings

  1. Gus Johnson/Joel Klatt/Jenny Taft (Fox Big Noon Saturday)
  2. Jason Benetti/Brock Huard/Allison Williams (Fox/FS1)
  3. Tim Brando/Spencer Tillman/Josh Sims(Fox/FS1)
  4. Jeff Levering or Mark Followill (week 2)/Mark Helfrich (Fox/FS1)
  5. Alex Faust or Dan Hellie/Petros Papadakis
  6. Eric Collins/Devin Gardner (FS1)
  7. Dan Hellie/Dirk Koetter (FS1)

Big Noon Kickoff

Hosts

Analysts

NCAA Insider

Contributors

Reporter

See also

Related Research Articles

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