Pigskin Stew Extra: TV Dictating Kickoff Times Is Not New & It's Not a Conspiracy

When the kickoff time for the Penn State/ Ohio State game was announced as a noon game on Fox, many fans took to social media with vitriol aimed at Fox for ruining the possibility of a White Out game at night against Ohio State.

Many asked why Fox doesn’t air the game at night. NBC has that Big Ten primetime slot and Fox cannot show the game at that time. It is not a conspiracy; it is compliance with the contracts agreed to by all parties involved. Those contracts and rights fees are the lifeline of TV money that fuels of an artificial amateur business model.

But this is far from the first time and far from the last time that TV will dictate when a team plays. Look at next year’s schedule for any Big Ten or SEC school. You’ll see dates for non-conference games. But then you'll see a slate of opponents, but no dates.

Penn State will play Northwestern, Indiana, Nebraska and Oregon at home and will play at Iowa, Michigan State, UCLA, Rutgers and Ohio State. We don't know the dates for those games yet. We do know the dates for the games against Nevada, FIU and Villanova (August 30th, Sept 6th & 13th). For those intent on seeing those big non-conference matchups you can make your plans now.

This is based on the NFL model so they can set up a big day to “reveal” the new schedule. The SEC is doing it too.

Take Texas for example. We know in their non-conference schedule, they will open the season at Ohio State on 8/30 and then play San Jose State (9/6), UTEP (9/13) and Sam Houston State (9/27). They will have home games against Arkansas, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt, road games at Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Mississippi State and play Oklahoma in Dallas at the State Fair of Texas.

So why the mystery? In conference rooms in LA, Bristol, CT and New York, TV executives sit with conference officials to plot out the SEC and Big Ten schedules, hoping that they can get dates and times when big games can grab massive audiences.

The Big Ten has set up network TV games every Saturday at noon (Fox), 3:30 (CBS) and 7:30 (NBC) opposite SEC games on ABC in those same three time slots. Since September 7th when conference games started to be played, the SEC has won bigger TV audiences in 13 of the 17 head-to-head TV slots. The exceptions for the Big Ten were Ohio State/Oregon (10/12), USC/Michigan (9/21), OSU/Marshall (9/21), and Wisconsin/Alabama (9/14).

These are the driving forces of these new TV contracts, getting big viewership to get big ad dollars to cover massive TV rights contracts. That is how the athletic departments fund their current long-term facilities debt service and the liabilities of big contracts for coaches, athletic directors and multi-year contracts for assistant coaches.

And that is the same pool of money that will be needed to pay revenue sharing with the athletes in the very near future. (Note: watch how many college football coaches will be trying to renegotiate their contracts in the next few months to fence off their salary money before player revenue sharing kicks in).

And in return for that money, you the fans are at the mercy of the powers that be.

But it’s not new…..

In the summer of 1968, the Penn State/ Syracuse game was scheduled for Saturday October 19, 1968.

Syracuse finished 1967 ranked #12 while Penn State finished ranked #10. It was believed that their 1968 game would be the game for eastern football supremacy. Back then, TV contracts were largely controlled by the NCAA and ABC generally did one national game per week. As ABC looked at the schedule, they asked Penn State and Syracuse to move Penn State’s home game to December 7th for TV. Because national TV games were rare and they wanted that TV exposure, both schools agreed to the move.

But being sensitive to public criticism of TV’s influence on college football, ABC and Beano Cook concocted a fictitious "story" to blame moving of the game on someone else.

At the time, Sue Paterno was in her late twenties, married to Penn State head Coach Joe Paterno and was expecting her fourth child on October 19th the date of Penn State's home game against Syracuse. Beano Cook thought it would be funny to issue a phony press release about ABC moving the game at Sue’s request so that she would not miss such a big game. The ABC press release even included a few fake quotes attributed to Sue Paterno.

Not everyone recognized that it was satire. Sue received nasty letters and phone calls to the house. She and Joe Paterno always maintained a home number that was listed in the phone book. For Joe’s entire career if you called the house, someone in our family would answer the phone. I learned some new vocabulary after some tough losses answering that phone.

One letter told her that if someone drove off the road and was killed because of snowy or icy roads after that December game, that the blood would be on her hands. The joke had gone too far.

ABC wrote a retraction; the game was played on 12/7 and Penn State won to conclude a 10-0 undefeated regular season. By way of reference, that 9 pound, seven-ounce baby was actually born two days after the due date, so there would have been no conflict after all. But babies are stubborn things, and they are born when they want to be born.

And now in 2024 and beyond, the need for an almost insatiable river of cash for college sports, those factors make TV contracts stubborn things. And the games will be played according to the terms of the contract.

As for that stubborn baby, I’m still stubborn after all these years.