Columbus is the center of the college football world this weekend, as No. 2 Ohio State (9–1) hosts unbeaten Big Ten counterpart No. 5 Indiana (10–0). But many Buckeyes fans aren’t happy with what the national spotlight has led to.

The game will be Ohio State’s fifth consecutive noon ET kickoff, one of six straight to end the season and seven overall in 2024.  

Fox puts its best matchup of the weekend in its Big Noon Saturday game window, which features Indiana–Ohio State in Week 13. The network is believed to be paying roughly $400 million annually for Big Ten rights, as part of $7 billion–plus deals that see CBS and NBC each contribute about $350 million per year.

So, Fox almost always gets the top pick of games. Could things be changing, though?

“That’s an offseason conversation,” Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork told Buckeyes-centric website Eleven Warriors this week.

Big Ten newbie Oregon is undefeated and ranked No. 1, but Fox has yet to broadcast a noon ET kickoff from the West Coast. Meanwhile, defending champion Michigan is struggling this year with a 5–5 record.

“We’re the biggest brand within the Big Ten,” Bjork said. “We have the most fans who watch our games. The ratings are really high.”

What Do the Numbers Say?

Fox’s strong noon games led to the most-watched CFB broadcast window of the 2023 season. 

This fall, Big Noon Saturday matchups have drawn some monster TV ratings, like 9.94 million viewers for Ohio State–Penn State and 9.35 million for Michigan-Texas. But CFB games on ABC (typically SEC contests) have actually drawn the most viewers at noon on seven out of 12 Saturdays, according to Sports Media Watch.

Primetime SEC games on ABC have drawn the biggest audiences of the season, and Ohio State’s lone primetime game at Oregon drew more than 10 million viewers on NBC.

Talking Points

Earlier this month, Fox No. 1 CFB game analyst Joel Klatt took to X/Twitter to defend the early start times. 

“Fox Sports saw a clear opportunity to build value into the sport by creating a 3rd window for premium CFB,” Klatt wrote. 

He also posted, “When each network gets to select a game for network AIR it must be shown in that [network’s] exclusive window.”

At rival ESPN, Pat McAfee has repeatedly taken jabs at the noon kickoffs. On College GameDay at Penn State, ahead of a matchup with Ohio State, McAfee said, “This game is not at night, this is a Big Noon Kickoff,” followed by boos from the crowd.

This week, McAfee and J.J. Watt, a CBS NFL analyst and regular guest of McAfee’s, both lamented the noon start times. “It’s frustrating,” said Watt, who played in the Big Ten at Wisconsin. “It does feel like we are hurting ourselves with not having the best games at night.”

“I respect how much money Fox has given to broadcast these games at noon,” McAfee said. “But me, personally, you work to get under the lights.”

A banner year for the National Women’s Soccer League could end with involvement from the biggest star in women’s basketball.

WNBA phenom Caitlin Clark has joined an ownership group seeking to bring an expansion NWSL expansion club to Cincinnati, marking another potentially impactful crossover between two major entities in women’s sports.

“Her accomplishments and contributions to women’s sports are incredible and historic. It’s changed the game for everyone,” said NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman on Friday. “Having her interest in the NWSL is an honor, and we couldn’t be more excited about her having shared her own personal story about being a young soccer player, loving the game, and her messaging about being a multi-sport athlete.”

Berman made her comments about Clark as the league is set to play its championship game Saturday at the Kansas City Current’s CKPC Stadium between the Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit, capping another season of significant growth for the league. 

After a breakthrough 2023 campaign, this season built substantially on that and included the beginning of four-year national media deals with a quartet of major networks, record attendance of more than two million, four team sales at steadily growing valuations, and major new sponsorship deals with heavy hitters such as Google and Amazon.

“The growth we’ve experienced over the last two years is incredible, and important for all of us to be reminded that this league is [still] really young, and our growth is in front of us,” Berman said. “Although it’s our 12th birthday, it’s only the third season that the league has been independent.”

Expansion Strategies

Cincinnati is competing with two other expansion finalists publicly acknowledged Friday for the first time: Cleveland and Denver, with Berman promising more news on that front “in the coming weeks.” But the southwest Ohio locale already has a modern, soccer-specific facility, the three-year-old TQL Stadium, and an established record of strongly supporting pro soccer. 

“Her passion for the sport, commitment to elevating women’s sports in and around the greater Cincinnati region, and influence as an athlete and role model for women and girls around the world make her a vital part of our compelling bid to become the 16th team in the NWSL,” the Cincinnati bid group said of Clark in a statement. 

The NWSL expansion consideration is part of a broader effort by the league to more closely resemble established men’s properties.

“We know that a 14-team league is not where we will end up,” Berman said. “All of the men’s leagues are 30-plus teams for a reason, and in order to build the kind of national exposure and visibility we think this league deserves, and our fans deserve, we need to be in more markets.”

WNBA Learnings 

The NWSL, meanwhile, has paid close attention to the WNBA’s meteoric growth in 2024, and regardless of whether Clark becomes a part-owner of a team, there are key lessons for women’s soccer—and vice versa. 

“The takeaways from the WNBA success are clear,” Berman said. “You have to create stars. You have to help fans relate to these incredible athletes. … This also didn’t come out of nowhere. Caitlin Clark has been emerging for three straight seasons. Of course, she transcended this year and reached the average American. But these things don’t happen overnight, and it takes time to create the kinds of authentic stars and stories that resonate the way that she has.”

A $9.8 billion deal to create the largest U.S. pay-TV distributor is now dead, with a heavy debt load both undoing this pact and spotlighting the broader challenges across the media business. 

Less than two months after DirecTV reached an agreement to acquire satellite-TV rival Dish Network, the pact that would have created an entity with nearly 20 million subscribers is no longer happening after Dish Network’s bondholders objected to the terms. DirecTV was to gain Dish Network for just $1 and assumed debt of nearly $10 billion, but that also would have required the existing bondholders to take a nearly $1.6 billion discount on that debt—something they refused to do.

“While we believed a combination of DirecTV and Dish would have benefitted all stakeholders, we have terminated the transaction because the proposed exchange terms were necessary to protect DirecTV’s balance sheet and our operational flexibility,” said DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow. 

A separate deal in which private equity giant TPG Inc. will acquire from AT&T the 70% stake in DirecTV it doesn’t already own remains on track, but it is now happening without the opportunity for greater scale in the marketplace. 

The moves are also happening as the U.S. traditional pay-TV business has shrunk by nearly half over the last decade, now standing at about 54 million U.S. households and continuing to decline. DirecTV, however, still has numerous sports ties, including commercial distribution rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, and acting this past summer as the primary sponsor of a series of friendlies in the U.S. involving top European pro clubs.