''Big Noon Kickoff'' is an American

college football College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football American football in the United States, firs ...

studio show broadcast by Fox, and simulcast on sister network

Fox Sports 1 Fox Sports 1 (branded on-air as FS1) is an American pay television television channel, channel owned by the Fox Sports (United States), Fox Sports Media Group, a unit of Fox Corporation. FS1 airs an array of live sporting events, including Majo ...

(FS1). Premiering on August 31, 2019, it serves as the

pre-game show A pre-game, pregame, or pre-match show is a television or radio presentation that occurs immediately before the live broadcast of a major sporting event. They typically feature previews and analysis relating to upcoming games (either a larger fix ...

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. It is hosted by Rob Stone, and features former national champion and 2004 Heisman Trophy winning

USC Trojans The USC Trojans (also Southern California Trojans) are the College athletics in the United States, intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. While the men's teams are nicknamed the ...

quarterback Matt Leinart, former national champion and 2009 Heisman Trophy winning

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

running back

Mark Ingram II Mark Valentino Ingram II (born December 21, 1989) is an American former professional American football, football running back and current on-air personality for Fox Sports. He played 12 seasons in the National Football League (NFL). He played ...

, former

Notre Dame Fighting Irish The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are the athletic teams that represent the University of Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish participate in 26 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I intercollegiate sports and in the NCAA's Division ...

quarterback Brady Quinn, and former

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Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

, and

Ohio State The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one of the largest universities by enrollme ...

coach

Urban Meyer Urban Frank Meyer III (born July 10, 1964) is an American Sports commentator, sportscaster and former college football coach. He spent most of his coaching career at the collegiate level, having served as the head coach of the Bowling Green F ...

as panelists, with Bruce Feldman acting as Fox's CFB insider, as well as

Tom Verducci Thomas Verducci (born October 23, 1960) is an American sportswriter who writes for ''Sports Illustrated'' and its online magazine SI.com. He writes primarily about baseball. He is also a reporter and commentator for Fox Major League Baseball a ...

, who usually does

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

for Fox, and Tom Rinaldi, both working on feature reports. Radio host Clay Travis serves as a contributor, and 1997 Heisman Trophy winner and former

Michigan Wolverines The Michigan Wolverines comprise 29 varsity sports teams at the University of Michigan. These teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA's NCAA Division I, Division I and in the Big Ten Conference in all sports except wo ...

cornerback Charles Woodson will also join the show on select weeks, most notably if Michigan is featured. Meyer was on the show as an analyst for the first two seasons, but left after the 2020 season to take the

Jacksonville Jaguars The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team based in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jaguars compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC South, South division. The team ...

head coaching job, and was replaced by former

Oklahoma Sooners The Oklahoma Sooners are the college athletics in the United States , athletic teams that represent the University of Oklahoma, located in Norman, Oklahoma, Norman. The 19 men's and women's varsity teams are called the "Sooners", a reference to ...

head coach Bob Stoops for the 2021 season. Meyer returned for the 2022 season replacing Stoops. Bush left after the 2022 season, with 2009 Heisman Trophy winner running back

joining the cast for the 2023 season.

History

In the 2013 season, Fox aired a college football pre-game show on its

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''. 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 The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference, among others) is a collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives in 1 ...

's primary football rights in 2017, the Michigan–Ohio State rivalry), 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. 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 and CBS replacing it with Big Ten football games in its place from 2024 onward) game of the week in the 3:30 p.m. timeslot, and ABC with their featured game in primetime. ''Big Noon Kickoff'' was henceforth introduced as a pre-game show for the new window. ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellen ...

'' described the show as being "built around"

(who retired as head coach of the

Ohio State Buckeyes The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tree, ...

at the end of the 2018 season, and had previously been an

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

analyst). Meyer stated that he had prepared for the role by studying clips of Fox's NFL pre-game show ''

Fox NFL Sunday ''Fox NFL Sunday'' is an American sports television program broadcast on the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox television network. The show debuted on September 4, 1994, and serves as the pre-game show for the network's National Football League (NFL ...

'', and

Alex Rodriguez Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez (born July 27, 1975), nicknamed "A-Rod", is an American former professional baseball shortstop, third baseman and designated hitter and current businessman. Rodriguez played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (ML ...

(who joined ESPN's ''

Sunday Night Baseball ''Sunday Night Baseball'' is an exclusive weekly telecast of a Major League Baseball game that airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ESPN during the regular season. The games are preceded most weeks by the studio show '' Baseball Tonight: Sun ...

'' in 2018), 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. For the 2020 season, the program was expanded to two hours. On November 4, 2020, for undisclosed reasons citing

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the National public health institutes, national public health agency of the United States. It is a Federal agencies of the United States, United States federal agency under the United S ...

and

Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Health Services Los Angeles County, officially the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, operates the public hospitals and clinics in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County and is the United States' second largest municip ...

guidance, Fox announced that the November 7, 2020 edition of ''Big Noon Kickoff'' would not feature the program's usual panel, and that the program would be shortened to one hour. The guest panel was led by '' Fox NFL Kickoff'' host Charissa Thompson, joined by ''Fox NFL Sunday'' analysts Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long, and Emmanuel Acho from

's ''Speak for Yourself''. On November 12, Meyer revealed that he had recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection.

Reception

The Big Lead ''The Big Lead'' was an American news blog. The website mainly covers sports news, although it also touches on a varying degree of other news topics ranging from politics to pop culture. Launched on February 24, 2006, it was co-founded by forme ...

'' 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. 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 #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with ca ...

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. 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. 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.

Personalities

Current

* Rob Stone: (Host, 2019–present) * Mike Hill: (Fill-in Host, 2019–present) *

: (Analyst, 2023–present) * Matt Leinart: (Analyst, 2019–present) * Brady Quinn: (Analyst, 2019–present) *

: (Analyst, 2019–2020; 2022–present) * Charles Woodson: (Part Time Analyst, 2019–present) * Clay Travis: (Contributor, 2019–present) *

: (Contributor, 2019–present) * Bruce Feldman: (Insider, 2019–present) * Tom Rinaldi: (Reporter, 2021–present) *Chris "Bear" Fallica: (Researcher/Contributor, 2023–present)

Former

* Reggie Bush: (Analyst, 2019–2022) * Bob Stoops: (Analyst, 2021)

On-site broadcasts

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. 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. With

Deion Sanders Deion Luwynn Sanders Sr. (born August 9, 1967) is an American American football, football coach with the Colorado Buffaloes football, Colorado Buffaloes. Sanders is also a former professional football and baseball player, having played in the N ...

' 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

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

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.

2019 season

2020 season

2021 season

2022 season

2023 season

2024 season

2025 season

On-site appearances by team

Big Noon Saturday

''Big Noon Saturday'' is an American weekly presentation of 12 p.m. ET broadcasts of

NCAA Division I FBS The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As ...

games on Fox. The branding has been used since 2019. It is generally the game played at the site of ''Big Noon Kickoff''. Due to the early kickoff times, the package has faced criticism for having undue impacts on teams not based in the

Eastern Time Zone The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 U.S. states, states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. * Eastern Standard Time (EST) is five ...

(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). 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 Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, moved to the SEC. 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. , the primary broadcast team for games includes play-by-play announcer Gus Johnson and analyst Joel Klatt, with Jenny Taft as sideline reporter, with Tom Rinaldi joining the crew for big games, most notably The Game.

References

External links

* {{FOXNetwork Shows (current and upcoming) 2019 American television series debuts College football studio shows American English-language television shows Fox Sports Fox Broadcasting Company original programming Saturday mass media